The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper is a complex satirical novel by Prussian Romantic-era author E. T. A.

[1] The text of the book states it is the autobiography of a cat named Murr who has learned to write.

However, in between Murr's autobiography, there are pages of a biography of another character, Johannes Kreisler.

Critic Alex Ross writes of the novel: "If the phantasmagoric 'Kater Murr' were published tomorrow as the work of a young Brooklyn hipster, it might be hailed as a tour de force of postmodern fiction.

"[2] Jeffrey Ford described the novel as a "complex, truly wild fiction" where Hoffmann "pieced together the fragments of his own shattered psyche and commented on the relationship of art and artists to society.