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A Novel
by Saou Ichikawa
Book Reviewed by: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 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.
Saou Ichikawa's debut novel, Hunchback, is acerbic and sexy and lightly provocative, partly because of the "twisted" thoughts of its narrator and partly for its depiction of the erotic relationship between a disabled woman and her able-bodied nurse, a relationship that resists easy categorizations and legible power dynamics. I thought it was genius. Hunchback is an illuminating, challenging exploration of the intersection between disability rights, reproductive rights, sex work, and class. It also falls under one of my favorite types of narrative, which is someone realizing that they can no longer lie to themselves, no matter how ugly or difficult the truth may be; within this category, Shaka's is one of the more entertaining, and, indeed, inspiring, stories I've read, both for the absurd lengths she'll go to and the intelligence she possesses while getting there...continued
Full Review
(857 words)
(Reviewed by Chloe Pfeiffer).
In Hunchback, protagonist Shaka considers writing her dissertation on Tomoko Yonezu, a women's liberation and disability rights activist. Yonezu may be most known for attempting to spray paint the Mona Lisa when it came to Tokyo in 1974, as a protest against the museum refusing access to disabled people who needed assistance. But she's also particularly interesting because she represents the intersection of two different, and sometimes contentious, social movements of the time—the Women's Liberation movement (ūman ribu), and the disability rights movement—an intersection that influenced decades of advocacy for bodily autonomy and against eugenics in Japan.
The story of this intersection starts in 1972, when the ...
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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
