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BBC Radio 4 Extra

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

Book of the Week

Audiobooks

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Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

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Book of the Week: David Mitchell - The Reason I Jump

Kasper Hilton-Hille

Allegra McIlroy

Naoki Higashida

Book of the Week: David Mitchell - The Reason I Jump: Episode 3

The Reason I Jump

Episode 3

David Mitchell - The Reason I Jump

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, David Mitchell - The Reason I Jump, Episode 3

13-year-old Naoki reveals a unique insight into his world as a child with severe autism.

13-year-old Naoki Higashida reveals a unique insight into his world as a child with severe autism. Read by Kasper Hilton-Hille.

By Naoki Higashida
Translated by David Mitchell and KA Yoshida, and introduced by David Mitchell
Read by Kasper Hilton-Hille

Thirteen year old Naoki Higashida reveals how his perception of the world is so alien to those without autism that he is often completely misunderstood. With delicate and moving descriptions he invites us into his world.

He explains how he can be immersed in the beauty of light filtered through his fingertips, or lost in the intricate world of memory and imagination.

Naoki's autism is so severe that he finds it difficult to hold a conversation, and he wrote the book painstakingly, using an 'Alphabet Grid', Japanese character by character.

When the author David Mitchell, whose own son has autism, discovered this extraordinary 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.

Abridged and Produced by Allegra McIlroy.

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

By Naoki Higashida. David Mitchell translates and introduces this extraordinary book

By Naoki Higashida. David Mitchell, award-winning author of Cloud Atlas, translates and introduces this extraordinary book by a Japanese teenager with severe autism. Read by Kasper Hilton-Hille

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David Mitchell - The Reason I Jump

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