Fuminori Nakamura graduated from Fukushima University in 2000. In 2002 he won the prestigious Noma Literary Prize for new writers for his first novel, "A Gun", and in 2005 he won the Akutagawa Prize for "The Boy in the Earth". "The Thief", winner of the 2010 Kenzabur e Prize, Japan s most important literary award, was his first novel to be published in English.