Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight

Original version

BBC Radio 4 LW

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Matthew Beard

Naoki Higashida

David Mitchell

KA Yoshida

Robin Brooks

Allegra McIlroy

Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight by Naoki Higashida: Episode 1

Episode 1

Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight by Naoki Higashida

BBC Radio 4 - Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight by Naoki Higashida, Episode 1

Novelist David Mitchell introduces this compelling book by a teenager with severe autism.

4 Extra Debut. Novelist David Mitchell introduces this compelling book by a teenager with severe autism. Read by Matthew Beard.

David Mitchell translates the astonishing follow-up to the ground-breaking THE REASON I JUMP. 

Naoki Higashida wrote his debut when he was 13 years old - all the more extraordinary since he has 'non-verbal' autism. He finds it difficult to speak, and wrote the entire book using a low-tech Alphabet Grid of Japanese syllables, which he points at one at a time to painstakingly build words. Naoki still uses the same method today.

When the award-winning author David Mitchell, whose own son has autism, discovered Naoki's first book, he felt that for the first time his own son was talking to him about what was going on inside his head, through the words of the young author.

Now, in FALL DOWN SEVEN TIMES GET UP EIGHT, written mostly around the age of 18, we meet a clear-eyed young man learning to co-exist with a mind and body not always at his beck and call. The title of the book is borrowed from a Japanese proverb about the merits of persistence, and offers experience, advice, and hope.

Once again, Naoki pushes beyond the notion of autism as a disability, and shines a light on the autistic landscape from the inside.

Written by Naoki Higashida.

Translated by David Mitchell and KA Yoshida

Read by Matthew Beard, and introduced by David Mitchell.

Abridged in five parts  by Robin Brooks

Producer: Allegra McIlroy

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2017.

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David Mitchell, award-winning author of Cloud Atlas, translates and introduces this compelling new book by a Japanese teenager with severe autism. Read by Matthew Beard.

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