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 ly become a landmark indie or World Cinema film one day. With my lukewarm praise this got a 5 out of 12, strong Two Stars.

2013 readcrime-fiction easternlit-namaste74 s4 comments Maciek569 3,553

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 learn hi name. He moves throughout the crowd, dressed in good suits, and steals money from other people in good suits, who remain as anonymous to him as he is to us.

Most of the intrigue in the early parts of the novel consists of the narrator describing picking pockets in detail, explaining various techniques that he uses; whether they are researched or made up remains to be decided. However, there is only so far that picking pockets can get us, and the narrator invariably becomes entangled in matters bigger than himself, and is presented with an offer that he cannot refuse: he has to steal contents of a safe belonging to an old man, and to do this he has to break into his home and intimidate him into revealing the code. No one has to die or even get hurt; but, as in novels and in real life, things go awfully wrong very quickly and our narrator becomes trapped in a situation which is way beyond his control.

The problem with The Thief is that it does not go anywhere; ultimately, there is no point to anything that happens. No grand revelation, or even a minor one; nothing to make us care for either the protagonist or any of the supporting characters. The most interesting part of the book is not even the main heist, but a subplot involving our narrator discovering a young boy who clumsily tries to steal food from a convenience store, which leads to him becoming a mentor-figure for the boy an an affair with the boy's mother; but even the mother and her son ultimately turn out to be nothing more than plot devices, serving only to move it further along. The worst offense is probably the reveal of the mastermind behind our narrator's complex situation, who comes out as a little more than a cliched evil guy, completely impervious to the world around him and for story reasons is allowed to act with complete impunity.

When I began to read The Thief, I expected a literary mystery, or even metaphysical crime fiction in the vein of Paul Auster; unfortunately, it is neither. As was the case with Last Winter We Parted, the book left me feeling empty and unmoved; although it is definitely more readable than its successor, I ultimately find it hard to recommend as I fear it will simply leave no impression upon completing it.japanese-literature read-in-2015 reviewed ...more72 s Tim477 746

Damn, justÂ… *pours a glass of sake and downs it in one go* Â… just damn.

Do you want a bleak noir? I donÂ’t mean a sympathetic criminal narrator who getÂ’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 crime; I mean something that is soul crushing. Something that makes you wonder what the point is ofÂ… well, everything.

The plot follows our narrator after he returns to Tokyo. HeÂ’s been gone for a while, ever since a simple armed robbery job wentÂ… well, wrong for him at least. His partner is missing and presumed dead, and the only person he now has any connection with is a young boy who would to learn the tricks of his trade. Now our narrator is just a pickpocket, and would to remain so, keeping his anonymous sense of self, but a mob boss has taken an interest in him, and has plans for his future.

Author Fuminori Nakamura writes what has been referred to as “zen noir” and I can’t honestly think of a better way to describe this. This is a philosophical novel, with a gritty crime twist. This is the sort of book where characters debate morality and the worth of an individual life. Characters consider the meaning of life and the idea of fate… and in the end, they are no closer to answering it than they were before.

Our narrator is a shockingly well-developed character, even though very little is actually said about him. It’s a great example of “show, don’t tell” as it’s the little things that are not said that builds his personality. Unless I missed it, I don’t even think he is ever given a name (it may have been mentioned in one line of conversation, but I can’t find it), yet he’s given so many interesting personality traits that I felt he was more realistic than many narrators in significantly longer works. I particularly d this little quirk where he occasionally would pick a pocket out of reflex and not even notice that he did so (and that these wallets would almost consistently have more money in them than any of the ones he consciously stole).

ItÂ’s a book rich with symbolism, but it also keeps its plot running at a breakneck pace. ItÂ’s a slim book at only 211 pages and, while it manages to have a few quiet moments, it always feels a ticking time bomb that you just donÂ’t know when it will go off. A friend of mine here on Goodreads said I could probably finish it in one sitting, and indeed I might have, if I had not gotten so overwhelmed by its bleak outlook. There were moments in this one that had me almost physically recoiling. ItÂ’s not extremely violent, or at least not graphically so, but itÂ’s the sort of book that gets under your skin as you consider the bigger picture.

This is an excellent book. Better than I feel I can possibly express, but it is not one I can suggest to everyone. ItÂ’s a book that I think pretty much everyone will walk away from with mixed feelingsÂ… but overall, I feel itÂ’s well worth a read if one is feeling up to it. A solid 4/5 stars
2000s japanese mystery-crime ...more64 s J.L. Sutton666 1,068

"What will happen to me in the end. What happens to people who live the way I do? That's what I'd 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 believable, this work is really compelling as a psychological study. I know some people didn't the ending. It was sort of a gut punch. At first I wanted more, but after thinking about it, I felt that it worked perfectly. 4.25 stars 46 s Jon Nakapalau5,390 789

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'... it or not. Atmospheric and chilling - a great crime novel.crime favorites47 s Sam Quixote4,620 13.1k

Fuminori Nakamura’s novel The Thief has the distinction of being a quick, fast-paced read without really having a plot! Our protagonist is a skilled Tokyo pickpocket who gets roped into one scheme after another by the Yakuza (Japanese mafia) – until he isn’t.

Nakamura might’ve mentioned the main character’s name at some point but I’ve completely forgotten it. Not that he has much of a character anyway – everyone else in the book, he’s essentially a cipher. He effortlessly picks anyone’s pocket, so what he does for most of the book is unexciting and rote, though it’s not clear why. He doesn’t seem to need any of the vast sums of cash he steals daily nor does he enjoy doing it and Nakamura never goes on to enlighten the reader further! Later on, he’s blackmailed by a mob boss to do something or he’ll be killed, which he goes along with but why does he want to live anyway – unless it’s just basic survival instinct keeping him going? Yeah, completely unfathomable and not the most memorable character at all.

the main characterÂ’s motivations, the entire story felt pointless. Towards the end, the cartoonish mob boss says something about toppling society but itÂ’s vague and unsatisfying. ItÂ’s mostly one pickpocketing scene after another, broken up by a robbery and a subplot involving a prostitute and her son that felt tacked-on, sentimental and baffling as to its inclusion. And, as expected for a directionless story, the ending is flat, empty and underwhelming. What was Nakamura driving at? Was there anything he wanted to impart? I got no strong impression one way or the other and it all felt random and murky at best.

Oh dear - it sounds I’m really down on this one, eh? The thing is, despite all of the above, I kinda d it! Because the protagonist is always doing something, and the writing is so smooth, the pages fly by. The old man robbery and the Yakuza boss telling his rambling fable in the sex club were both unusual and interesting scenes. While Nakamura leans heavily on noir genre conventions with its clichéd characters and their unimaginative struggles – basically for all: money – the book never annoyed or bored me.

ItÂ’s a literary crime thriller thatÂ’s very superficial in all of those aspects, and I expect IÂ’ll have forgotten it all sooner rather than later, but I wouldnÂ’t call it a bad novel either; unfocused is probably the best word. The Thief is a slick and easy read that goes down effortlessly though itÂ’s hella shallow too. 39 s Cynthia633 43

Film Noir meets Georges Simenon

“The Thief” was amazingly good. It’s about a Tokyo pick pocket who gets caught up with some big time criminals. It’s a very short book so I was shocked at how psychological it was. I’m not sure how the author was able to include such an in depth take on Nishimura, the main character in so few words. Nishimura spends his days on packed trains and packed streets finding his mark and swiftly moving in. He has standards though. He only takes the cash and puts the rest of the wallet with its contents in the mail to be sent back to his victim. Then an old friendship leads him to the gangsters. He’s forced into pulling what they say is a one time job. Nishimura is a loner until a street kid and his mother manage to touch his heart though he spends all his time denying it. This complicates his life but also makes him feel more hopeful.

It’s not so much what happens in this book that’s important but the meaning behind it. “The Thief” has a Film Noir atmosphere to it and I was also reminded of Georges Simenon’s fiction. There’s a dark cloud hanging over Nishimura and though he works hard to carefully put one foot in front of the other doom seems to hover right behind him. I still can’t believe the level of insight Nakamura was able to cram into so few words. He’s definitely a writer to keep your eye on. I hope the translations keep coming.

4.5/5

This review was based on an e-galley provided by the publisher.
books-read-in-201236 s Mizuki3,103 1,285

It's a fast paced, enjoyable, no-nonsense and economically-written hard boiled thriller/noir.

I really how the author, Mr. Nakamura wrote about different criminal activities and how the mind of criminals actually work (to a point that it looks to me he had soaked himself with criminality to get such intimate knowledge), he made it all seem believable and real. The Thief is a book which can keep you at the edge of your seat, although I have mixed feeling about the ending, still it's a decent ending though it's a bit weak.

Edited@08/12/2020 : years ago I'd read the English translation of this book, then this year I read the Chinese translation of this book, it is a quick read, the sense of urgency and desperation is well crafted, the crew is small in number but each character serves their own purposes finely, the writing is 'to-the-point', no-nonsense and I am impressed by how the author planned his book without any long-winded stuff, I it.detective-novels japanese-authors pretty-good32 s Berengaria528 107

4 stars (English title: The Thief)

short review for busy readers: typical Japanese style. Simple language, little description, no explanations of motives or feelings, short dialogues, slightly disjointed plot. Nonetheless, a gripping story about a master pickpocket who steals for the thrill. Two chance encounters throw his life onto a completely different course and force him to reexamine his past. Fast read.

in detail:
IÂ’ll be the first to admit, East Asian writing and I donÂ’t get along too well. Despite my dis of the style itÂ’s written in, the novel gained my complete respect by the final page.

What is fate? the novel asks.

Is fate the poverty we were born into, our pickpocket? Or perhaps itÂ’s the personality trait that sees joyful theft as a way to overcome the humiliation of birth for a brief space of time? To get our own back. To stop feeling a slave/ victim of fate, even for a few moments.

Or, no. Perhaps it’s the people we meet who have the power – whether they know it or not - to change the course of our lives, for good or ill. Is that really our fate?

Or perhaps itÂ’s the people at the very top who we know almost nothing about, but with so much power that they see themselves as gods. Those mafiosiesque people for whom others are little more than toys or tools and are never considered in their games.

“What those at the pinnacle hardly care about, is for those way below a matter of life and death,” says one character at the end of the novel.

Is that the human face of a much greater phenomenon? the novel asks. Maybe god or the universe or life itself is just that, caring nothing for those on the bottom, but playing with and orchestrating their lives - allowing them to live or die based on nothing but whim?

Our pickpocket finds out the hard way that he will never escape his fate. Never escape the people he's run into in the course of his life. Never be able to steal his way out.


Despite the compact style, I still felt a few points of the novel were slow and I couldnÂ’t entirely understand the motivations of the MC all the time, due to the character only telling us what he does, not what he thinks or feels.

This novel is for fans of Japan and those who copless crime novels with an exotic twist.
2024-reads asian-lit30 s1 comment Dave3,206 379

Japanese noir! Not only must the skill of the author be admired, but that of the translators who took a Japanese novel, albeit a short novel, and turned it into an English-language novel. I don't know if in Japanese it had the same feel to it, the same Rhythm, the same cadence, but it has a real sense to it in English, a real feel To it rather than simply being an awkward translation.

It's an unusual novel and rather than being an action piece, it is a slow languid ode to a man who is a solitary traveler through the Tokyo crowds, a master craftsman at the art of pickpocketing.

As long as he lives outside the bounds of society, disconnected, nearly ethereal, he is successful. It is only when he makes connections that he is flesh and blood again and exposed to danger. It is only then that he is tamed and captured.

It is a rather enjoyable piece that evokes certain feelings but it is meant to be a short piece not a full deep novel.read-borrowed27 s Sinem A.451 257

Yeni dönem japon bir yazar? dilimizde okuyabilmek keyifliydi. Bir antikahraman?n çabuk biten hikayesi..nippon23 s Rafia Rahman187 80

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