The Thief
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
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.
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
Fuminori Nakamura. (2012). The Thief. Soho Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Fuminori Nakamura. 2012. The Thief. Soho Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Fuminori Nakamura, The Thief. Soho Press, 2012.
MLA Citation (style guide)Fuminori Nakamura. The Thief. Soho Press, 2012.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 3 | 3 |
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{B7F9132E-64D0-479B-AA5F-F709323C676C}IMG100.JPG
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{B7F9132E-64D0-479B-AA5F-F709323C676C}IMG200.JPG
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/{B7F9132E-64D0-479B-AA5F-F709323C676C}IMG150.JPG
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/{B7F9132E-64D0-479B-AA5F-F709323C676C}IMG400.JPG
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781616950224
- type: PublisherCatalogNumber
- value: 213800
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: PublisherCatalogNumber
- value: 213800
- type: ASIN
- value: B0058ZITZK
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: PublisherCatalogNumber
- value: 213800
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781616950224
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 1616950218
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Fuminori Nakamura
- title
- The Thief
- dateAdded
- 2012-12-20T22:08:00Z
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=647401
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- Thief
- crossRefId
- 647401
- id
- B7F9132E-64D0-479B-AA5F-F709323C676C
- starRating
- 3.2
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: TheThief_9781616950224_647401
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 482633
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781616950224
- type: PublisherCatalogNumber
- value: 213800
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: 0
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 0
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 3/20/2012
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
- url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/B7F/913/2E/Thief9781616950224.epub
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=B7F9132E-64D0-479B-AA5F-F709323C676C&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: TheThief_647401
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: PublisherCatalogNumber
- value: 213800
- type: ASIN
- value: B0058ZITZK
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 3/20/2012
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
- url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/B7F/913/2E/Thief9781616950224.epub
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=B7F9132E-64D0-479B-AA5F-F709323C676C&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: TheThief_9781616950224_647401
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781616950224
- type: PublisherCatalogNumber
- value: 213800
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 3/20/2012
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
- url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/B7F/913/2E/Thief9781616950224.epub
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=B7F9132E-64D0-479B-AA5F-F709323C676C&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- keywords
- value: pulp fiction
- value: crime fiction
- value: translation
- value: crime thriller
- value: Action
- value: japanese
- value: pulp
- value: hardboiled
- value: Japan
- value: Fiction
- value: crime
- value: novels
- value: classic
- value: detective
- value: Thrillers
- value: existentialism
- value: suspense
- value: 20th Century
- value: Short Stories
- value: mystery
- value: murder
- value: collusion
- value: noir
- value: Adventure
- value: french
- value: novel
- value: psychology
- value: Thriller
- value: Tokyo
- value: International
- value: pickpocket
- value: fiction books
- value: fantasy
- value: Buddhism
- value: crime novels
- value: crime thriller books
- value: Hard Case Crime
- value: thriller books
- value: mysteries and thrillers
- value: crime books
- value: mystery novels
- value: mystery thriller suspense
- value: suspense books
- value: books fiction
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: Nakamura, Fuminori
- bioText: Fuminori Nakamura was born in 1977 and graduated from Fukushima University in 2000. He has won numerous prizes for his writing, including the Oe Prize, Japan’s largest literary award, and the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. The Thief, his first novel to be translated into English, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is the recipient of the David L. Goodis Award for Noir Fiction. He lives in Tokyo with his wife.
- name: Fuminori Nakamura
- role: Translator
- fileAs: Izumo, Satoko
- name: Satoko Izumo
- role: Translator
- fileAs: Coates, Stephen
- name: Stephen Coates
- imprint
- Soho Crime
- publishDate
- 2012-03-20T00:00:00-04:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- The Thief
- fullDescription
- A literary crime masterpiece that follows a Japanese pickpocket lost to the machinations of fate. Bleak and oozing existential dread, The Thief is simply unforgettable.
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. - reviews
- premium: False
- source: Wall Street Journal, Best Book of the Year Selection
- content: Praise for The ThiefA Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2013 Finalist A Wall Street Journal Best Fiction of 2012 Selection A World Literature Today Notable Translation An Amazon Best Mystery/Thriller of the Month Winner of Japan's Prestigious Ōe Prize "The Thief brings to mind Highsmith, Mishima and Doestoevsky . . . A chilling existential thriller leaving readers in doubt without making them feel in any way cheated."
- premium: False
- source: Tor.com
- content: "Citing the influence of Dostoyevsky and Kafka, Nakamura is a master of atmosphere, blending elements of surrealism, existentialism and crime fiction to create a grim, colorless, noire Tokyo."
- premium: False
- source: Publishers Weekly
- content: "Nakamura's writing is spare, taut, with riveting descriptions . . . Nakamura conjures dread, and considers philosophical questions of fate and control . . . For all the thief's anonymity, we come to know his skill, his powerlessness and his reach for life." --Cleveland Plain Dealer "Nakamura's memorable antihero, at once as believably efficient as Donald Westlake's Parker and as disaffected as a Camus protagonist, will impress genre and literary readers alike."
- premium: False
- source: Library Journal
- content: "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."
- premium: False
- source: The Japan Times
- content: "Nakamura's dark imagination gives rise to his literary world . . . the influences of Kafka and Dostoyevsky are not hard to spot."
- premium: False
- source: ForeWord
- content: "Fast-paced, elegantly written, and rife with the symbols of inevitability."
- premium: False
- source: Suspense Magazine
- content: "The Thief manages to wrap you up in its pages, tightly, before you are quite aware of it." --Mystery Scene "[An] extremely well-written tale . . . Readers will be enthralled by this story that offers an extremely surprising ending."
- premium: False
- source: Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine
- content: "The reader catches glimpses of Japan and its lifestyle, which is far from a pretty picture."
- premium: False
- source: International Noir Fiction
- content: "Nakamura succeeds in creating a complicated crime novel in which the focus is not on the crimes themselves but rather on the psychology and physicality of the criminal. The book's power inheres in the voice of the thief, which is itself as meticulously rendered as the thief's every action." --Three Percent "Both a crime thriller and a character study, it is a unique and engrossing read, keeping a distant yet thoughtful eye on the people it follows . . . It's a haunting undercurrent, making The Thief a book that's hard to shake once you've read it." --Mystery People "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."
- premium: False
- source: Out of the Gutter Magazine
- content: "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."
- premium: False
- source: Dolce Bellezza Blog
- content: "So many issues are raised in this novel. It is wonderfully brief, and spare, much like something Hemingway would write."
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
January 9, 2012
Nakamura makes his English-language debut with this compelling look at a Tokyo pickpocket’s life. The thief, eventually identified as Nishimura, leads an anonymous existence dependent on his ability to become as physically close as possible to others without drawing the slightest attention. Crime fans won’t be surprised when outside entanglements compromise the peerlessly expert and solo Nishimura. While taking a protective interest in a prostitute’s young son, a budding thief in his own right, Nishimura also becomes involved, at his former partner Ishiwaka’s behest, with a home invasion. After the raid leaves an elderly politician dead, Nishimura finds himself under the thumb of its planner, the mysterious criminal mastermind Kizaki. Nakamura’s memorable antihero, at once as believably efficient as Donald Westlake’s Parker and as disaffected as a Camus protagonist, will impress genre and literary readers alike.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
February 15, 2012
Handpicked by Nobel laureate Kenzaburo O e for his eponymous O e Prize in 2009, Nakamura--who has also garnered many of Japan's other top awards (the Noma Literary New Face Prize, the coveted Akutagawa Prize)--makes his stateside debut-in-translation. Disguised as fast-paced, shock-fueled crime fiction, this work resonates even more as a treatise on contemporary disconnect and paralyzing isolation. The protagonist--a virtuoso pickpocket with Robin Hood tendencies--agrees to participate in what initially seems to be a simple robbery for a lucrative fee, only to become inescapably embroiled with the Tokyo crime world's omnipotent elite. Meanwhile, his last tenuous connection to society is a desperate young boy forced into clumsy shoplifting by his addicted, prostitute mother. With nowhere left to run, the thief must barter his life with a labyrinthine test of his thieving prowess. VERDICT 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 (The Devotion of Suspect X), will especially enjoy discovering Nakamura.--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
February 15, 2012
The titular thief is a deft Tokyo pickpocket. He's also a human cipher who finds wallets that he doesn't remember lifting and who is preoccupied, even vaguely menaced, by imposing towers that he sees in dreams and throughout the city. He's a loner who only mentions two people in his life: his professional mentor, Ishikawa, and Saeko, a woman who bore his child but is now dead. The thief is drafted into an armed robbery by Kizaki, a vicious gangster who extolls the ultimate pleasure of deciding the time and place of an underling's murder. The thief is almost entirely devoid of affect until Kizaki turns on him. Many Western crime lovers may be put off by the book's utter foreignness, but it is strangely, compulsively readable for its portrait of a dark, crumbling, graffiti-scarred Tokyoand the desire to understand the mysterious thief. This debut novel recently won the Oe Prize, one of Japan's most prestigious literary awards.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)
- popularity
- 364
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/b7f9132e-64d0-479b-aa5f-f709323c676c/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- b7f9132e-64d0-479b-aa5f-f709323c676c
- starRating
- 3.2
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{B7F9132E-64D0-479B-AA5F-F709323C676C}IMG100.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{B7F9132E-64D0-479B-AA5F-F709323C676C}IMG200.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/{B7F9132E-64D0-479B-AA5F-F709323C676C}IMG150.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/{B7F9132E-64D0-479B-AA5F-F709323C676C}IMG400.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Fiction
- value: Literature
- value: Mystery
- publishDateText
- 03/20/2012
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781616950217
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
- A literary crime masterpiece that follows a Japanese pickpocket lost to the machinations of fate. Bleak and oozing existential dread, The Thief is simply unforgettable.
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... - sortTitle
- Thief
- crossRefId
- 647401
- publisher
- Soho Press
- bisacCodes
- code: FIC025000
- description: Fiction / Psychological
- code: FIC050000
- description: Fiction / Crime
- code: FIC062000
- description: Fiction / Noir
