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Following his ground-breaking international bestseller THE REASON I JUMP, written when he was only thirteen, Naoki Higashida offers equally illuminating and practical insights into autism from his current perspective as a young man.

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The Sunday Times bestseller

Naoki Higashida met international success with THE REASON I JUMP, a revelatory account of life as a thirteen-year-old with non-verbal autism. Now he offers an equally illuminating insight into autism from his perspective as a young adult. In concise, engaging pieces, he shares his thoughts and feelings on a broad menu of topics ranging from school experiences to family relationships, the exhilaration of travel to the difficulties of speech. Aware of how mystifying his behaviour can appear to others, Higashida describes the effect on him of such commonplace things as a sudden change of plan, or the mental steps he has to take simply to register that it´s raining. Throughout, his aim is to foster a better understanding of autism and to encourage those with disabilities to be seen as people, not as problems.

With an introduction by David Mitchell, Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight includes a dreamlike short story Higashida wrote for this edition. Both moving and of practical use, the book opens a window into the mind of an inspiring young man who meets the challenges of autism with tenacity and good humour. However often he falls down, he always gets back up.

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Essential reading for parents and teachers who work with individuals with autism who remain non-verbal Temple Grandin

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Mitchell, David

David Mitchell is the author of the novels Ghostwritten, number9dream, Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, The Bone Clocks and Slade House. He has been shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize, won the John Llewellyn Rhys, Geoffrey Faber Memorial and South Bank Show Literature Prizes among others, and been named a Granta Best Young British Novelist. In 2018, he won the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer´s entire body of work.

In addition, David Mitchell together with KA Yoshida has translated from the Japanese two books by Naoki Higashida - The Reason I Jump: One Boy´s Voice from the Silence of Autism and Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight: A Young Man´s Voice from the Silence of Autism.

He lives with his wife and their two children in Ireland.
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