Episode 2

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

With astonishing detail and insight, thirteen year old Naoki Higashida shares his experience of the world, explaining how his autism can separate him from those around him. He reveals the slippery nature of time for a person with autism, the way that noises can shake his entire landscape, and the joy he experiences when playing with words and rhythm.

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 award-winning 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.