Written by Naoki Higashida at thirteen, The Reason I Jump takes the form of short, direct responses to questions about living with non-verbal autism.

They explain why repetition happens, what panic feels like, how perception fragments or sharpens in ways that don’t translate easily into speech. What could easily become explanatory or clinical instead reads as an attempt to bridge an experiential gap from the inside, without smoothing it out for comfort.

The structure—brief answers, parables, small reflections—keeps returning to the same tension: the body misfires, the mind does not. David Mitchell’s involvement (both as translator and advocate) frames it for an English-language audience, but the force of the book is in its refusal to perform coherence on demand.

This is the 2013 Sceptre (Hodder & Stoughton) UK hardback, translated from Japanese by KA Yoshida and David Mitchell, in very good condition with clean pages and minimal visible wear.