Fuminori Nakamura's "The Thief" - Book Review - A Japanese Wonderland full of twists and turns

Murakami is one Japanese writer whom I worship and adore so when I finished reading "The Strange Library" by Haruki Murakami, I was left with a strong urge to read some other Japanese translation. I have a strange connection to Japanese literature, it feels like home to me. This is strange considering the fact that I have never been to Japan or interacted with anyone from Japan. So I came across "The Thief" by Nakamura and the title was enough for me to start reading it.

The best part about these translations is that they are as smooth as butter, you can't stop reading page after page after page and before you know you have finished a 300 page book in a day. "The Thief" as the title suggests is a crime novel, sort of crime novel you can say because it is more about the thoughts that are produced before and after the crime rather than the crime itself.

The book begins with a boy telling us about his picpocketing skills and just like in Murakami's works, there is a beautiful unattainable women. Here it is mother of a kid who are together a duo our narrator spots at a supermarket, they are stealing food. The protagonist of the story is a aimless pickpocketer who one day gets himself into a gangster murder drama and ends up killing and robbing people of high authority and importance.

Every page of "The Thief" you keep feeling something is going very wrong and yet you keep having hope that it shouldn't but it does. Nakamura has created a dangerous world in the most normal and serene settings ever and that is the beauty of his writing. Mundane things of life end up being the most challenging ones at times. The boy's interaction with the kid and his mother shows us layers of the boy's personality, his caring nature, his want to ensure that the kid gets what he craves for because he reminds him of his own childhood, such situations are beautifully written.

 So all in all, the book is a perfect read for a long weekend because once you finish it, you will feel you are in Japan and within Nakamura's world for atleast a day more. "The Thief" is a picpocketer's journey to the world of more serious crimes and how the tragedy strikes in the end.