Hunchback is small, but mighty. The narrative is both humorous and tragic, bringing the reader on a rollercoaster of emotions. Ichikawa writes with sincerity, forcing the reader to reflect, especially as an able-bodied woman. The themes of sexuality and womanhood are conveyed in a new, eye opening light and forced me to consider many aspects of life as an able-bodied woman that I take for granted. It’s dark humour is centred around an informative narrative, shedding light on the ableism in Japanese society.

The ending came as a complete shock to me and for such a short novel I was completely hooked.

‘to live, my body breaks’ p.51

For a book that’s shorter than 100 pages this packs a punch. Beginning and ending with stories somewhat separate to the main bulk of the book, this felt like a coin being flipped. Looking at disability and desire whilst also highlighting the ableist nature of the everyday, particularly in Japan.

‘Able-bodied Japanese people have likely never even imagined a hunchbacked monster struggling to read a physical book.’ p.37

Thank you to NetGalley of the English Translated ARC. I have a feeling I’ll be thinking about this book a lot longer than it took me to read it.

Hunchback by Sou Ichikawa, translated by Polly Barton is a fascinating look at the life of a disabled woman in contemporary Japan. Very frank with a dark sense of humor. I hope more contemporary literature like this gets translated.

I loved the humour and what this has to say about bodily autonomy. Our MC spends the book fighting for this in her own ways, and making humorous observations about her life as a disabled woman in a care home.

I just wanted it to be longer, so we could spend more time with the MC and the characters in the care home. It would have been good to explore the themes with more detail.

Particularly shocking in many respects, this meta-novel is read in one go and then maybe even reread, trying to figure out where we got into the Möbius strip. If you figure it out, let me know.

Particolarmente scioccante da molti punti di vista, questo metaromanzo si legge tutto d'un fiato e poi magari si rilegge pure, per cercare di capire dove siamo entrati nel nastro di Möbius. Se lo capite fatemelo sapere.

I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

A short thought provoking and provocative book that thematically challenges viewers perspectives and beliefs on agency as a woman and disabled individual, power and privilege, sexuality and desire.

The main character Shaka lives in a group care home and offers insight and a lens of how disability is experienced and viewed by others within Japanese society or rather how they are pushed to the sidelines and largely ignored. The twist in the tale at the end really challenges the notion of privilege and disadvantage where the lines between exploitation and transaction become shades of grey.

Impressed and hoping Ichikawa plans to write more. I would say if you found Earthlings by Murata to be thought-provoking this is another for you.

Thank you netgalley & penguin general uk for the e-ARC.

Often when I read Japanese (translated) literature, I come away with a general feeling of detachment. This was anything but.

Confrontational and unsettling, Saou Ichikawa explores the complex stigma around disability and sexuality. With a provocative narrative you are forced to see Shaka as so much more than the label of disabled.

It's an uncomfortable read, purposely so, but it's definitely one that I won't forget.

A provocative read about a wealthy young woman with a muscular condition who resides in sheltered living and spends a lot of her time writing erotic fiction and partially pseudo-journalistic articles about swinging clubs and similar venues. She is blackmailed by a member of staff at the home and sees this as an opportunity to experience things that she feels have not been easily accessible to her as a disabled person.
This book challenges preconceptions about disabilities, and it also challenged my own thinking. There is a section of the novel where she talks about the act of reading a book and how this is physically damaging to her body, and it made me appreciate how much reading is actually a privilege.
The more I think about this book the more I appreciate it.

I wanted more, I loved Shaka. It gave such insights into the life of a disabled person, it is dark, funny, I felt uncomfortable, shocked and haven’t stopped thinking about it.

Told from Shaka's point of view, this is an unsettling story which has beautifully translated by Polly Barton - despite the subject matter, the prose just swam by.

Shaka lives in a small care home setup by her parents. Through the narrative, we learn that she's got a collapsed lung, a twisted spine, difficulty breathing/coughing and her life is severely impacted by what machines she needs to be hooked up to at any one time. Her mind is free and she is studying for a degree.

She also moonlights as an erotica writer. The book opens with one of her X-rated pieces about a night in a swingers club. There are several other x-rated sections. The stark contrast highlights the gap between her fantasies and her real life. As she dryly comments "What a funny old ecosystem where these meaningless sounds transliterate by a middle aged, severely disabled virgin generate income by setting people's honeypot quiver."

Shaka doesn't want your sympathy and her idolisation of sex/getting pregnant as something that she's missing out on leads her to risk everything. I'm not sure anyone comes out of this well, there's no hope and the ending is ambiguous.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Well I certainly didn't see that end coming.

Shaka Isawa is the main character in Hunchback and narrates her own story. She lives in a care home where her physical needs are met by a team of carers. Shaka has a rare condition that leaves her wheelchair-bound and having to wear a restraining "corset" to prevent her internal organs being crushed by the weight of her body.

A new carer brings new possibilities when he admits that he has read her salacious and often shocking blog but what will his terms be for him to bend to her desires?

Saou Ichikawa is a new voice for me and this novel is clearly based on her own life. It won the Ukatagawa Prize and the Bingukukai Prize for New Writers. It is not hard to see why as she mixes the struggles of Shaka's physical limitations with the disturbing desires she exhibits and writes about in her blog. The book reminds me of the more unusual Japanese literary fiction that I love - Murata, Yuzuki or Mieko Kawakami to name a few. I can't wait to see what she writes next.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Penguin General UK for the advance review copy. Most appreciated.

I’m a bit conflicted about this book because just as I was understanding it and enjoying it, I discovered it was very close to the end. To say this was a short story that packs a punch is an understatement. I’ve probably spent more time thinking about it than it took to read. Sorry no plot description from me because that’s part of the charm. This book is unique and remains an enigma.

This is an angry book in a lot of way. Written by an author with severe disability about a protagonist who is severely disabled, this book is probably semi-autobiographical. The key word is semi, since you hope the worst parts are only fiction.

Shaka, born with congenital muscular disorder, has to use an electric wheelchair and ventilator to prevent her lungs from collapsing. She is now forty with a considerable inheritance and she is being cared for in a facility she owns which have other patients. Whatever her physical limitations are, her mental prowess shines through with her doing course after course and earning on the side by writing erotica of perfectly abled people. She also galivants on the social media under various false ids voicing her fantasies.

She makes one such tweet where she wants to get pregnant and get aborted. She is willing to throw away her entire inheritance to experience this but the experiment goes wrong with her developing complications. Trust me when I say this, but this is one of the toughest short books I have read where you can feel something akin to physical pain.

In her writing she calls out the debate between pro-abortion rights of parents who find the foetus disabled and disabled people rights to live. She talks about the elitism of normal people and their preference for physical books without realizing how it is biased against people with disability. There are almost no filters and she even sympathizes with a caretaker who has post partum pain. She starts writing her own fiction.

While the book is critical to be recognized, it is not a pleasant reading experience. In fact, i had initially turned down the reading offer after I saw it starts with a graphic erotica piece at a swingers club. But then, after the longlist, I picked this up and finished it in a day. It feels wrong to rate it, I am reacting as to how I felt reading it. Not for me.

Thank you Penguin Books and Netgalley for the ARC copy.

It is a short, provocative book. There is not much in the way of plot but as a character study it is quite valuable.

Wow this was a zinger of a book! Intelligent and provocative, Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa (Japanese edition ハンチバック first published in 2013, English translation by Polly Barton to be published in March 2025) is a fantastic examination of female agency, sexuality and desire, power and privilege, and storytelling as a means of liberation.

Shaka Isawa is a middle-aged woman with myotubular myopathy who lives in a group care home. Due to this rare cause of muscle weakness, Shaka has severe scoliosis as well as a tracheostomy, dependent on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to help with breathing difficulties. Mostly bed-bound, she spends her days reading, learning, posting tweets and publishing erotic stories and various articles online. This is about as much as she gets in the way of connection, confined to the internet as well as the residents and staff at the care home. Financially, she wants for nothing, her late parents having made sure she’ll be well cared for in their absence. But she’s never felt free to live and determine the course of her own life, not the way able-bodied women do. When a male carer enters the picture, she makes him an offer he surely can’t refuse…

This was such an affecting, humorous read exploring how disability is experienced and viewed in Japanese society. While it lightly touches on the different forms disability can take, the bulk of the book is seen through Shaka’s specific experiences, informed in part by the author’s own. Interrogating disability through the lens of gender, wealth and class, ableism and feminism, it casts a blistering eye upon society’s treatment of those who live on its margins. Adding to the frustration is that, marginalisation doesn’t mean being free of society’s condescension or saviour complex either, despite their lacking the experience she has lived. It’s harmful and dehumanising, this withholding of respect and dignity from another perceived lacking; a form of violence.

And that ending! It took things to another level, adding a whole new dimension to the story. Upending what we thought we knew about the narrative to transcend the idea of boundaries altogether, it reminds the reader of all that remains possible, that the stories we create for ourselves have the power to set us free. Thank you so much @vikingbooksuk @penguinukbooks , I loved it! 💖

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa is an unflinching, uncomfortable and important book.

Following Shaka, someone who lives life with the immense support of a wheelchair and ventilator, we pass our days with her - what she does with her body and what she does with her mind. While Shaka is ridden to her quarters, her online personality is outlandish, confronting and controversial. Only one person, a male carer, discovers her life online and soon a proposal is made to fulfil one of Shaka's unsettling fantasies.

I don't know what I expected from Hunchback, but it was one of the most amazing and thoughtful books I've read. It is uncomfortable and it means to be. The writing was exquisite, and well paced. I believe that not a word was wasted in this novel/novella.

Thank you NetGalley for my copy of Hunchback - I will be awaiting Ichikawa's next book with intrigue!

Hunchback is far from being an easy read. Although quite short, between novelette and novel, there are heavy thoughts & deep insight that can make you stop many times to think about what you just read.
I have to acclaim the writing, as well as the translation. Being myself a professional, I know how difficult it can be to convey a message both culturally and linguistically appropriate. Kudos to Polly Barton for succeeding!
As for the author, I think there needs to be an accolade for courage somewhere. She really is a pioneer, and her work, eyes-opening. I wish she continues to write.
(On my GR: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/75625793-jules)

This may only be around 100 pages long but it's one of the most confronting 100 pages I've read. The narrator, Shaka, suffers from a debilitating muscle condition that has made her housebound with a severely twisted spine crushing her lungs and limiting her movement. She's not looking for pity but is angry about the way she and other disabled people have been written out of Japan's national narrative.

But this book is more complicated than that because Shaka also details her embodied experience, putting her body on display for the reader so that I was caught between a horrible sense of my own curiosity and a shameful feeling of voyeurism that is acutely unsettling.

To ramp up the discomfort, Shaka is immensely wealthy - she owns the care complex in which she lives and can afford the technology she needs for her online writing life and to enable her second degree. She gives away her profits in a philanthropical move - but is herself suddenly confronted by one of the care workers who is badly paid and who wants some of her cash. The whole issue of different forms of privilege and disadvantage thus explodes into the narrative and creates a transaction dynamic where it's really not clear who is abusing or exploiting whom.

I appreciated the whole way Ichikawa opens up this subject matter, not least the issue of sex and desire. She also makes disability individualised in a productive way, while making us think more widely about how it may react intersectionally with other forms of privilege or its lack.

This isn't a comfortable book - and nor should it have to be. But it is uncomfortable in the best, widening, thought-provoking way.

With all due respect, what was this? Let me tell you, reading this on public transport is a choice that I regret making (thank goodness it was a place where English is not the first language, otherwise I would have been getting some serious side-eye).

There's a chronic lack of literature featuring disabled characters, which is ridiculous considering that anyone can become disabled at any time. There's so many things that can go wrong with the human body, and for many people reading this review, that will not be news to you.

The main character, just like our author, suffers from congenital myopathy. This is a condition that I have never seen representation of, and so I'm thankful that this representation exists for those who need it. However, that's where my praise for this book ends. I don't really understand why it was written. It was far too crass for me, and while the writing isn't horrible, it doesn't do anything miraculous. I didn't root for or particularly care about anyone mentioned in the book for good or bad reasons, and aside from discussions about ableism which we very much need to be having more of, this book felt ultimately pointless and unremarkable. I'm surprised this book in this state managed to win a prize, however I would probably read something else by this author.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read an advanced copy of this book. I wish it had gone to plan as far as my enjoyment of it is concerned.

Hunchback is a an exceptionally intelligent , deceptively simple story of a very wealthy disabled woman living an isolated life in a care facility. She writes erotica under various pseudonyms online and tweets about her twisted and unsettling inner desires.

When circumstances force her into a compromising position, a new male carer reveals he knows much more about her online identity than she is comfortable with, and this sets off a twisted series of events that will have you wincing with embarrassment, scratching your head in confusion, before the conclusion leaves your jaw on the floor.

I genuinely loved this book, my only wish is that it were a little longer, and covered the blogging and erotica themes in a little mire depth. A poignant and memorable tale, I read this through again as soon as i finished it. I highly recommend to lovers of literary fiction that explores society and teases the border of weird fiction. Similar vibes to Sayaka Murata but with less surrealism.