Fuminori Nakamura was born in 1977 and graduated from Fukushima University. He has won numerous prizes for his writing, including the Ōe Prize, the Akutagawa Prize, and the David L. Goodis Award for Noir Fiction. The Thief, his first novel to be translated into English, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His other novels include The Gun, The Kingdom, Evil and the Mask, The Boy in the Earth, Cult X, My Annihilation, and Last Winter, We Parted. He lives in Tokyo with his wife.