The Thief

By: Fuminori Nakamura, Satoko Izumo - translator

Narrated by: Charlie Thurston

Length: 4 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

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 that 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 and steal the contents of a 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.

©2009 Fuminori Nakamura; 2012 Satoko Izumo (P)2012 BBC America

Critic reviews

“I was deeply impressed with The Thief. It is fresh.” (Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel Prize–winning author of A Personal Matter)

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

“Disguised as fast-paced, shock-fueled crime fiction, Thief resonates even more as a treatise on contemporary disconnect and paralyzing isolation.... Mystery/crime aficionados with exacting literary standards, as well as readers familiar with already-established-in-translation Japanese writers Miyuki Miyabe ( Shadow Family), Natsuo Kirino ( Out, Grotesque), and Keigo Higashino ( Naoko, The Devotion of Suspect X), will especially enjoy discovering Nakamura.” ( Library Journal)

I would say it's not a bad book, just not good

Would you try another book from Fuminori Nakamura and Satoko Izumo (translator) and/or Charlie Thurston?

Not sure, would need to be in the mood. I think something got missed in the translation.

Would you recommend The Thief to your friends? Why or why not?

No

What three words best describe Charlie Thurston’s voice?

common, indistinct and plain

Could you see The Thief being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Could be a better moving than book / audiobook

Unexpected perspective

What made the experience of listening to The Thief the most enjoyable?

The perspective mixed perfectly with the story. I liked the first person narrative and how he meshed with the little boy. A reluctant master with an eager apprentice.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

Not really. But I found this book to be driven well by its characters, not necessarily by its plot.

Have you listened to any of Charlie Thurston’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

First time with Charlie Thurston, I liked him a lot.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, I didn't think it would be going in, but the book just sort of flew by.

Not a winner as an audio book

The story has its moments and the reader is OK as a narrator but when he acts out a character he's terrible.

"He do the police in different voices"

I read this novel described somewhere as a tale of "existential dread." As such, it's good. The protagonist's life choices--to make a living through petty theft--separate him from the collective--the community--that is so vital to Japanese culture, and yet he forms a micro-community with other lost souls like himself. The antagonist, Kizaki, mocks him and his friend Ishikawa for this very desire to connect with others. He claims that suffering is just fate, that the end of life is fated, that one life matters no more than another. The protagonist asks himself why his own life matters, even to himself.

I wish I'd read this book in the old-fashioned way, both so I could reread and ponder a bit more and because the narrator is rather annoying. His villain-voice makes Kizaki sound like an old-fashioned mustache-twirler, and sometimes his voice drops to such a low pitch that I couldn't even hear it. The little-kid voice makes the kid sound bratty and tedious. The reader is a perfect fit for the protagonist...just not for anyone else.

c'est la vie

omg what a cliffhanger.
the kind of book where u figure out how it ends for urself.

Well, it is short.

The good news is that this book is short, so if it doesn't float your boat, you haven't lost much time. I'm not sure that there is anything wrong with the book per se other than the fact I just don't care for the characters or the themes. I'm sure there are people out there who will respond positively to this book...I'm just not one of them!

It does pick up quite a bit in the second half and I was on the verge of liking the book, but I found the ending unsatisfying.

Memories of Keruoac-- not cops and robbers!

As I read (listened) to this book, my mind was drawn back to many years ago to the themes found in the writings of Jack Kerouac, which swept college campuses across the country. Nakamura approaches the timeless questions of value choices we must confront when searching to find meaning and direction in lives created day by day.

He poses the timeless questions of good and evil, of love, hate or total indifference. Is it moral to live solely for myself and by myself? Was the Master Thief an evil man? He did take what was not his, but belonged to another. What if the owner was evil and harmed innocents? Is it immoral to steal from an immoral man? And, if the thief uses his stolen fortunes to save and shelter an endangered innocent, is his own life evil?

I am not familiar with the author. This is the first of his books I have read. It is encouraging to find that we have fresh writers to carry on the quests of earlier generations. If you are looking for just another cops and robbers read, this is not for you.

An interesting "Protagonist"

A tense story that follows an untraditional lead who is caught in a seedy underworld.

Surprising. In a Good Way.

I???m not normally one for books told from the career criminal???s point of view. In most cases I???m not sympathetic to them, regardless of the real or imagined traumas that led them to their lives of crime, and I???m rarely swayed or intrigued by their angst or their revelling in the misery they inflict. So a story told by a pickpocket should not, on past experience, have engaged me at all but it did. It may have something to do with the fact that the eponymous thief (named only once as Nishimura) doesn???t delve deeply into the morality of his actions (aside from a claim to only steal from rich people) and certainly doesn???t spend time justifying himself. He is what he is and rather dispassionately tells his story which I somehow found more acceptable than the books which give lengthy reasons for a person becoming a life-long criminal.

There is also, at least on the surface, is not a lot going on here in that rather than a major story arc the book concerns itself with an almost random slice of Nishimura???s life which is another reason I ought not to have been engrossed in the book as that kind of thing often irks me. But with THE THIEF almost immediately I did want to know what troubles would befall the narrator (there was never even a glimmer that his life would bring something other than troubles). Somehow his detachment and reserve made me hang on for the few tiny morsels that would provide insight into the man, his personal history and his ultimate fate.

Some of THE THIEF borders on the surreal, the female characters are prostitutes or dead (downtrodden women are a feature of all the Japanese crime fiction I have read) and the ending is as ambiguous as it gets which are all more reasons why I would normally not enjoy a book. And yet I listened to the whole thing in a single sitting almost without noticing the time passing. I am glad to have read the book and would recommend to those prepared for something a little different.

Epic tragedy on a small scale: The Thief by Fumino

A review of The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura. Translated by Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates. Audio book read by Charlie Thurston

The Thief is that rare combination of being thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining. It chock full of compelling, memorable characters, a storyline that pulls you in and keeps you in during entire literary ride and the landscape of the story, contemporary, seedy Japan, is brilliant. There are times I can almost sense the infamous pushers cramming people into the trains. As with any translation where one cannot read the source, it’s difficult to say how well written it is. However, this translation is written exceptionally well with crisp, spare dialog and evocative descriptions. I can only conclude that Messrs. Izumo and Coates must have done a masterful job based a great source. Despite the tragic nature of the world which our characters inhabit as well as their own tragic nature, this is an exceptional novel with a very different look at life that provides a flat-out great story. I highly recommend it.

For those who love audiobooks, I also commend the narration of Charlie Thurston. While he’s not Japanese, he seems to be move (or at least speak) comfortably in a Japanese setting. It was a delight to be able to use Whispersync (about which more here, if interested) to jump between my Kindle version and the Audible recording without back tracking or loosing my spot.

For full review: wp.me/p2XCwQ-f6