The Thief, Fuminori Nakamura
The Thief, Fuminori Nakamura
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The Thief

Author: Fuminori Nakamura, Satoko Izumo, Stephen Coates

Narrator: Charlie Thurston

Unabridged: 4 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/01/2012

Synopsis

The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no family, no friends, no connections … but he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when Ishikawa, his first partner, reappears in his life, and offers him a job he can’t refuse. It’s an easy job: tie up an old rich man, steal the contents of the safe. No one gets hurt. Only the day after the job does he learn that the old man was a prominent politician, and that he was brutally killed after the robbery. And now the thief is caught in a tangle even he might not be able to escape.

About Fuminori Nakamura

Fuminori Nakamura has won numerous prizes for his writing, including Japan’s prestigious Ōe Prize; the David L. Goodis Award for Noir Fiction; and the Akutagawa Prize. The Thief, his first novel to be translated into English, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His other novels include Cult X, The Gun, The Kingdom, Evil and the Mask, The Boy in the Earth, My Annihilation, and Last Winter, We Parted. He was born in 1977 and graduated from Fukushima University in 2000.

About Charlie Thurston

Charlie Thurston is an experienced audiobook narrator, actor, and playwright who has received numerous Earphones Awards for his work. He has appeared on Law and Order: SVU, and his voice can be heard in audiobooks such as The Oracle Year, Southernmost, The Terranauts, and The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Baba

Cold yet fascinating thriller centred round a professional pick pocket who gets drawn into working with the Yakuza. Somewhat trying too hard to be clever, in my opinion. A good little read, that will most likely become a landmark indie or World Cinema film one day. With my lukewarm praise this got a......more

Goodreads review by Maciek

At its core The Thief aims to be a philosophical neo-noir, but in the end it simply proves too bland to pass the test. The protagonist and narrator of the book is a seasoned Tokyo pickpocket, and also a total enigma: he has no family and very few friends, and for most of the book we do not even lear......more

Goodreads review by Tim

Damn, just… *pours a glass of sake and downs it in one go* … just damn. Do you want a bleak noir? I don’t mean a sympathetic criminal narrator who get’s his comeuppance tragically, or a hard boiled private eye getting stuck sending his love interest to the slammer after solving that she committed the......more

Goodreads review by J.L.

"What will happen to me in the end. What happens to people who live the way I do? That's what I'd like to know.” Fuminori Nakamura's The Thief provides an engaging perspective on the day to day life of a Japanese pickpocket. While the routines our thief uses is interesting, and the details make it be......more

Goodreads review by Jon

A professional pickpocket finds himself in the middle of a complex maze of deceit with no way out. When he picks the pocket of a prominent politician (who is murdered) he finds that there are individuals that want to use him as a 'mark'...like it or not. Atmospheric and chilling - a great crime nove......more

Quotes

“A minimalist sliver of Tokyo noir…An intelligent, compelling, and surprisingly moving tale, and highly recommended.” The Guardian (London)

“Strangely, compulsively readable for its portrait of a dark, crumbling, graffiti-scarred Tokyo—and the desire to understand the mysterious thief.” Booklist

“More Conrad than Connelly…A breath of fresh air for readers looking for something beyond the procedural.” Time Out Chicago

“I defy you not to finish the book in a single sitting.” Richmond Times-Dispatch

“We get all the way to page 53 of…before we learn the name of its protagonist narrator…By then a reader may feel no special need to know what this nervy fellow is called, so well has Mr. Nakamura caused us to view the world through the thief’s hypersensitive mind.” Wall Street Journal

“His grasp of the seamy underbelly of the city is why Nakamura is one of the most award-winning young guns of Japanese hard-boiled detective writing.” Daily Beast

“I was deeply impressed with The Thief. It is fresh.” Kenzaburō Ōe, Nobel Prize–winning author

“Fast-paced, elegantly written, and rife with the symbols of inevitability.” ForeWord

“More than a crime novel, The Thief is a narrative that delves deep into the meaning of theft and the nature of justice…Japanese crime fiction has a new star.” Out of the Gutter

“The drily philosophical tone and the noir atmosphere combine perfectly, providing a rapid and enjoyable ‘read’ that is nonetheless cool and distant, provoking the reader to think about (as much as experience) the tale.” International Noir Fiction

Awards

  • Amazon Top 100 Book
  • Amazon Best Book of the Month
  • Los Angeles Times Book Prize
  • Wall Street Journal's Top 10 Mysteries of the Year
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