Hunchback
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By Saou Ichikawa
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1 review
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2025
Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe spine curvature and uses an electric wheelchair and ventilator. Within the limits of her care home, her life is lived online: she studies, she tweets indignantly, she posts outrageous stories on an erotica website. One day, a new male carer reveals he has read it all – the sex, the provocation, the dirt. Her response? An indecent proposal…
Written by the first disabled author to win Japan’s most prestigious literary award and acclaimed instantly as one of the most important Japanese novels of the twenty-first century, Hunchback is an extraordinary, thrilling glimpse into the desire and darkness of a woman placed at humanity’s edge.
‘A must-read debut. Funny and frank, this book lingers in the mind long after you turn the final page’ BBC Books of 2025
Hunchback is one of the boldest and most unusual books to emerge from a mainstream publisher in years. It’s a brilliant, riveting book that lets us tune into the voices we have long kept suppressed. Sunday Times
‘Uproariously funny, unflinching, and merciless’ Mariana Enriquez, author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
‘Filled with unforgettable insight’ Sakaya Murata, author of Convenience Store Woman
TweetReviews
An unusually frank mix of sex and disability, written with wry humour, that makes a a full and unflinching disclosure about the difficulties of living with physical disability, including a guilt-inducing section on the problems with physical books for disabled people and the ignorance of able bodied people in their lack of understanding about said problems:"ableist machismo." A real eye-opener of a book.
