The Thief

I had turned my back on everything, rejected community, rejected wholesomeness and light.  I had built a wall around myself and lived by sneaking into the gaps in the darkness of life.
Fuminori Nakamura, The Thief (translated by Satoko Izum and Stephen Coates, Soho Press, 2012)

The nameless narrator of this book is a pickpocket, though one who is kind to children and also indulges in other crimes; looming throughout is organized crime --the yakuza-- which the pickpocket unsuccessfully tries to avoid.  This slim, intense book is obviously influenced by Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and other works:  a character at one point says to the narrator, "After all, it's all about courage.  Do you know the book Crime and Punishment?  Probably not. Raskolnikov, he had no courage."  It also reminds me of Richard Stark's novels about the thief Parker, which also give details of the inner workings of crimes.  Two movies about pickpockets also seem to be influences:  Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street (1953, story by Dwight Taylor) and Robert Bresson's austere Pickpocket (1959):  both films are similar to Fuminori Nakamura's book in their emphasis on the details of the crimes and the existential loneliness of the criminal.