David Mitchell
The Reason I Jump
Naoki Higashida was born in Kimitsu, Japan in 1992. Diagnosed with non-verbal autism as a child, he learnt how to communicate using an alphabet grid and when he was thirteen wrote The Reason I Jump. Published in Japan in 2007, its English translation in 2013 was widely acclaimed and became a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller as well as a New York Times bestseller. It has since been published in over thirty languages.
The documentary film of The Reason I Jump was directed by Jerry Rothwell, produced by Jeremy Dear, Stevie Lee and Al Morrow, and funded by Vulcan Productions and the British Film Institute. It received its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020 where it won the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary. The film won further awards at the Vancouver, Denver and Valladolid International Film Festivals before its global release in 2021.
Higashida’s sequel to the book, Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight, about living with autism from his perspective as a young adult, was published in Japan in 2015. An English-language edition, including new material and a short story Higashida wrote especially for it, was published in 2017 and was in turn a Sunday Times bestseller. He has also written children’s books, poems and essays.
David Mitchell’s novels include Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks and, most recently, Utopia Avenue. KA Yoshida was born in Yamaguchi, Japan, and specialised in English Poetry at Notre Dame Seishin University.
Audio Rights
AvailableThe audio rights are handled by Alice Lutyens.
Katie McGowan manages the translation rights for The Reason I Jump
Translation Rights Sold
The Sunday Times Full Review
This book takes about 90 minutes to read, and it will stretch your vision of what it is to be human. Andrew Solomon
The Times Full Review
Does this book tell us something new? I believe it does. There is already some vague public awareness of the very different and special thought processes experienced by autistic people and Higashida illustrates this wonderfully, as does Mitchell in his introduction. Amanda Mitchison
The Financial Times Full Review
The Independent
Full Review
Part memoir and part FAQ session interwoven with short stories and allegories, it brings the fascinating quirks of the autistic mind to life. Even more remarkable is that its author, “severely autistic” Naoki Higashida, was only 13 years old when he wrote it - by spelling out every word on a cardboard alphabet grid. Luisa Metcalfe
The Daily Express Full Review
We have our received ideas, we believe they correspond roughly to the way things are, then a book comes along that simply blows all this so-called knowledge out of the water. This is one of them. Marcus Berkmann
The Daily Mail Full Review
Despite the Herculean effort of translating the autistic experience into language, The Reason I Jump reads effortlessly, each page challenging preconceptions that autistic people lack empathy, humour or imagination. Emma Claire Sweeney
The Independent Full Review
This book is mesmerising proof that inside an autistic body is a mind as subtle, curious, and caring as anyone else's. Adam Sherwin
The Independent Full Review
The Guardian Full Review
The Bookseller Full Review
The Reason I Jump is intended to demystify the behaviour of autistic children for a ‘neurotypical’ audience and was first spotted online by Mitchell’s Japanese wife, Keiko Yoshida. Catherine Scott
The Telegraph Full Review
