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A Novel
by Saou Ichikawa
A bombshell bestseller in Japan, a provocative, defiant debut novel about a young woman in a care home seeking autonomy and the full possibilities of her life—"a darkly funny portrait of disability" (Japan Times)
Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka spends her days in her room in a care home outside Tokyo, relying on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. But if Shaka's physical life is limited, her quick, mischievous mind has no boundaries: She takes e-learning courses on her iPad, publishes explicit fantasies on websites, and anonymously troll-tweets to see if anyone is paying attention ("In another life, I'd like to work as a high-class prostitute"). One day, she tweets into the void an offer of an enormous sum of money for a sperm donor. To Shaka's surprise, her new nurse accepts the dare, unleashing a series of events that will forever change Shaka's sense of herself as a woman in the world.
Hunchback has shaken Japanese literary culture with its skillful depiction of the physical body and its unrepentant humor. Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, it's a feminist story about the dignity of an individual who insists on her right to make choices for herself, no matter the consequences. Formally creative and refreshingly unsentimental, Hunchback depicts the joy, anger, and desires of a woman demanding autonomy in a world that doesn't aways always grant it to people like her. Full of wit, bite, and heart, this unforgettable novel reminds us all of the full potential of our lives, regardless of the limitations we experience.
"Hunchback is a deadpan account of living in a body at war with itself, but this battle does not ask for pity, nor is this narrative, or the body at its center, fragile: It's full of a force that able bodies can't fully grasp,written in a language that talks both clinically and sexually. It's also uproariously funny, unflinching, and merciless. It's not very often that you encounter this provocative yet so refreshingly honest of a read." —Mariana Enriquez, author of A Sunny Place for Shady People and Our Share of Night
"Defiant, subversive, sexy, dark, and full of originality, Hunchback breaks like a shard of lightning through a complacent, oppressive world." —Seán Hewitt, author of Open, Heaven and All Down Darkness Wide
"Propulsive, sexy, and distilled, Hunchback is the novel on disability and desire I've been waiting for. Shifting between the minutiae of physical limits and broader structures of ableism, Saou Ichikawa's writing is as narratively gripping as it is explosively insightful. This is an essential book." —Daisy Lafarge, author of Paul
This information about Hunchback was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Saou Ichikawa graduated from the School of Human Sciences, Waseda University. Her bestselling debut novel, Hunchback, won the Bungakukai Prize for New Writers, and she is the first author with a physical disability to receive the Akutagawa Prize, one of Japan's top literary awards. She has congenital myopathy and uses a ventilator and an electric wheelchair. Ichikawa lives outside Tokyo.
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