I’ve been reading a lot of translated Japanese fiction lately and really enjoyed it.
This one is no exception. The author is a Japanese lady, who lives with the disability of which she writes about here.
It’s very well done, thought provoking, and inspired.
I’m extremely pleased to have picked this one up and am happy to recommend this to all.
Thank you to the author and the publisher for allowing me the ARC.

This novella is about a middle aged Japanese woman who has a severe disability due to a congenital muscular disorder and severe scoliosis. She lives in a group home, using a ventilator and needing help with activities. In her spare time she writes online porn and studies.

It's a sparsely written account with minimal plot. The author tackles ableism and the taboo subject of disabled people's sexuality. The writing is explicit in parts and its a challenging read but there's something strangely beautiful about it and it's thought provoking.

As soon as I saw this published and translated by Polly Barton from Japanese author Saou Ichikawa, the first novel by a disabled writer to win Japans most prestigious award Akutagawa prize, about disability, sex and privilage. I knew I had to read it!! I could talk about this so much!
This book won't be for everyone!
Talks of pregnancy/abortion/sex

Saou Ichikawa has Scoliosis, an S shaped curvature of the spine along with a muscle condition called Myotubular Myopathy! I also have Scoliosis S shaped spine, but I have been so lucky to have the spinal fusion surgery to insert metal rods down my spine to stop the curve progressing. I was told if I didn't have the surgery I would be in a wheelchair, breathing difficulties, organs crushed etc, just like what Saou is living with.

This story is about Shaka a woman living in a care home, seeking the full possibilities of her life as a disabled person. She is an erotic sex writer and writing content online, "so it serves as a good part-time job for those with caring responsibilities or people with serious disabilities like me, who struggle to leave the house." (I did find all the written sexual content a bit strange). She one day asks her careworker to be a sperm donor, so she could feel what it would be like to get pregnant but couldn't keep the baby with her disabilities! She relies on an electric wheelchair and ventilator to breathe. She reads and writes on her iPad, and a passage she writes about "Able-bodied Japanese people have likely never even imagined a hunchbacked monster struggling to read a physical book, while all those ablebodied ebook hating physical book lovers"

This book is about her own dignity and the right to make choices for herself, even if that ended her in hospital at one point.
I wish Saou all the best and what a lovely lady donating her money to charities! Such an inspirational lady!

I was intrigued by the reviews for this book but after reading I have no idea what all the hype was about. It’s great to see a book about the experiences of a disabled person out there but this book has no substance at all. There is no real plot and the writing is mediocre at best. Sorry not to have enjoyed it more.

ARC obtained from Penguin General UK via NetGalley.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC! This book won a prestigious Japanese literary award, with Saou Ichikawa being the first physically disabled author to do so. I thought it was stunning, honestly. Dark and disturbing, for sure, but forcing readers to confront their internal prejudices/stereotypes of disabled people - primarily that they’re non-sexual beings. The main character and narrator of this semi-autobiographical novel(la) was born with a muscular disorder, is a super rich orphan living in a care facility, and is incredibly horny. She yearns to live life the way able-bodied women do, and regularly tweets out inflammatory tweets along the lines of wishing she could try sex work or get an abortion. She writes SEO articles about sex clubs for seedy websites and publishes online erotica under several pen names. When a male careworker links Shaka to her online personas, things get dicey.
.
Exploring lust, desire, abuses of power and privilege, ableism in Japan, money and the freedom the internet affords people denied it elsewhere, this is just a little bombshell of a book. Perhaps too little - I wanted more of Shaka, she’s cheeky, intelligent, headstrong and I could have read 200 pages more of her. The ending was fantastically grim and could be read a couple of ways. Flawlessly translated by Polly Barton. Desperately hoping this author has more to come!

July 26, 2016 is the date of one of the deadliest attacks in Japanese history. After breaking into a care facility in Sagamihara, just outside of Tokyo, Uematsu Satoshi murdered 19 disabled people, and injured a further 26. Actions he later justified as “mercy killings” of people he characterised as unable to fully participate in society. His victims received remarkably little attention in the mainstream media - compared to those who’d died in other killing sprees on Japanese soil. But the date, and aftermath of Uematsu’s crimes, retain significance for Japanese disability activists: eloquent examples of discriminatory attitudes and an accompanying culture of silence. These aspects of Japanese society are part of what Saou Ichikawa sets out to confront in her award-winning variation on a protest novel.

At the centre of Ichikawa’s semi-autobiographical novella’s narrator Shaka Izawa. Like Ichikawa herself, Shaka was diagnosed during childhood with a form of congenital myotubular myopathy and is now in her forties. Shaka’s an extremely wealthy orphan with a studio apartment in a group facility she inherited, named Ingleside in honour of her love of Anne of Green Gables. Ichikawa’s arresting narrative is set during the Covid pandemic, and presents a highly-detailed portrait of Shaka’s everyday life underlining the specificity of her situation: emphasizing her individuality rather than confining her to membership of an amorphous grouping dubbed “disabled.” The vast majority of Shaka’s time’s spent inside the apartment where an array of mobility aids and medical equipment supports her existence: allowing her to breathe without suffocating from the mucus constantly clogging her lungs. She has no visitors other than care workers and facility employees, although she sometimes eats in the facility’s communal dining room, eavesdropping on fellow residents. But Shaka’s keenly aware of her outsider status, someone who disrupts society’s rhythm in a Japan that works on the “basis disabled people don’t exist.” She wryly refers to herself as “monstrous hunchback.” She’s enrolled in in a distance-learning degree which has the added attraction of affording her the “acceptable” title of student.

However, Shaka has a series of secret online identities. She contributes ‘kotatsu’ articles, composed from secondary sources, promoting adult entertainment including ‘happening’ bars designed for anonymous sexual encounters. These writings overlap with fictional erotica, and provocative tweets related to Shaka’s frustrations, sex, and disability. A means for Shaka to experiment with, otherwise inaccessible, desires. But when care worker Tanaka links Shaka to her online personas, his attempt to use this information to extort money provides an opportunity to act on her fantasies. Through their transgressive interactions Ichikawa confronts taboos and stigmas surrounding explorations of disability and sexuality. But their vastly different economic status, comparatively-impoverished Tanaka versus ultra-rich Shaka, raises further questions of relative privilege and power: it’s never entirely clear who’s the abuser and who’s the abused in this relationship. It’s a complex, unsettling storyline which anticipates, and resists, any temptation to position Shaka as automatically without agency – an all-too-common assumption underlying numerous depictions of disabled people. Although Tanaka, with his overwhelming air of “ressentiment,” also conjures elements of the prejudice displayed by certain quarters of the non-disabled community.

Ichikawa’s influences include Kenzaburō Ōe and Masahiko Shimada; like Shimada, Ichikawa’s unconventional novella plays with genre boundaries, framing Shaka’s narration with extracts from Shaka’s erotic journalism and fiction. A move which highlights the artificiality of narrative and forms of representation, feeding into Ichikawa’s own concerns about storytelling and disability. It's a gripping, erudite piece which touches on topics from reproductive rights and eugenics to mind/body dualism, to the exclusionary practices of a publishing industry that often shuns the e-book formats that make it possible for Shaka to read without pain. Ichikawa draws too on her research into the history of disability and Japanese literature; as well as paying homage to previous generations of disability activists and protestors including Tomoko Yonezu - famous for spraying the Mona Lisa with red paint while on display in Japan, calling attention to Tokyo National Museum’s policy of barring entry to anyone requiring assistance. Translated by Polly Barton.

I read this in about an hour. I didn’t see the ending coming.
It was compelling, intriguing, and unexpected.

I’m struggling to give this book a star rating, simply because of the themes and deeply personal aspects in this story. It explores a disabled woman’s life and sexual desires, and the ableism she faces on a daily basis. Her life is slightly depressing, but her addiction to lust is even more disturbing, as are her lengths to achieve her desires. I can see why this book sent shock waves when it was published, it’s graphic and crass and incredibly detailed.

An extremely powerful novella about ableism in Japan, from the point of view of a woman with a serious physical disability, written by an author with that same disability. It is furious and relentless, brutal and unforgiving, and places the body, with all its flaws and desires, firmly in the centre stage and doesn’t take its eyes off it for one second.

*Hunchback* by Saou Ichikawa is a raw and confronting examination of disability and ableism. The novel offers a powerful critique of societal prejudices, immersing readers in the life of Shaka, a disabled woman living in a care home funded by her wealthy parents. Through her online fiction and interactions with a carer who discovers her secret, the story explores themes of desire and societal exclusion with unflinching honesty.

The writing is sharp, combining humor with an intelligent, unapologetic look at disability and human desire. It's a compelling 4-star read for its bold narrative and insightful commentary.

Thanks to the publisher and #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I'm really not sure how to rate this book. It was predominantly about a disabled woman who describes her disability and the issues she has with some able bodied people, but I found a lot of the concepts confusing and lacking focus.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for gifting me this arc in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

While I liked the blurb and following a character with disabilities, I expected a deeper exploration of the themes after starting the book and the style of the prose was not my favourite.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and author for the e-ARC of this book.

“Being able to see; being able to hold a book; being able to turn its pages; being able to maintain a reading posture; being able to go to a bookshop to buy a book - I loathed the exclusionary machismo of book culture that demanded that its participants meet these five criteria of ablebodiedness. I loathed, too, the ignorant arrogance of all those self-professed book-lovers so obvious to their privilege.”

Right from the outset this is a confronting, raw, dark, pulsing examination of disability and ableism. A strong commentary on societal prejudices towards those with disabilities, providing an insight most people will never have even considered.

We follow the life of Shaka, a disabled woman living in a care home funded by her parents’ wealth. She lives vicariously through the online posts and fiction she writes, until one of her carers reveals he has found her online alias and they make an arrangement…

Beautifully written with humour and wit. The inclusion of sex and desire; the refusal to censor what are basic human desires. Full frontal and intelligent. I really loved this book for everything it is throwing in the readers face, and rightfully doing so unapologetically.

Shaka is a disabled woman living in a care facility. Her parents have been able to provide well for her financially and she spends her time writing erotic fiction. There are experiences she'd like to have though and she approaches a male carer about assisting her with this. It's a super short read (just over half an hour) and I felt the blurb didn't match the story brilliantly. Because of the brief nature of the book it feels like it doesn't really get going.

Hunchback is a short novel about a disabled woman, exploring her life and what happens when one of her care workers has found out more about her. Shaka was born with a muscle disorder and now lives in a care home she owns, where she spends her time studying online and writing erotica and darkly honest social media posts. When care worker Tanaka reveals he's read it all, Shaka decides to try and get the one thing she's been looking for.

This is a short, sharp look at one disabled woman's life—echoing some of the author's experiences—that pushes at the boundaries of what people in many societies (not just in Japan, where the book is set) think about disability and what disabled people's lives are like, including around sex. There's very little narrative, but there's quite a lot you can get into terms of story from the book, including an ambiguous ending that blurs the lines between layers of fiction and storytelling in the novel. It's a gripping book, easy to read in one sitting, that offers a perspective unlike most narrators in fiction.

I absolutely adored this book! I love the attention it brings to people that have a disability as someone who deals with chronic debilitating health issues that we matter and have feelings and the right to indulge in all life’s pleasures and opportunities just like anyone else. This book will resonate with many fellow warriors

a japanese woman born with a hunchback reflects on her life.

as the reader, you can tell saou ichiwaka, has drawn from her own experiences as the description of dealing with health issues / disabilities is very relatable.

i would’ve personally preferred if the story was focused more on disabilities in japan rather than sexual topics.

This is a really interesting book. It made me think about things I hadn’t considered before - particularly how the view of disability may differ country by country. It’s an odd book. I can’t really describe if I liked it or not. I am not usually keen on books with such a large focus on sex. You should read it though. It’s well written, and then you can decide what you think.

I seem to be in a minority here but what I read didn't seem to match up with the synopsis. I mean it was very very quick (30 min read!) and I didn't DNF but it just wasn't for me.

When I first started reading this I thought I'd accidentally requested to read a smut-lit book but it turns out it was just what the protagonist did for fun. Shaka was born with congenital muscle disorder and lived in a group home found and paid for by her deceased parents. Whiling away the hours writing erotic fiction, Shaka had thoughts and questions about things she wanted to experience that able-bodied women could, that she wanted to post on social media but she saved them to her drafts, until she didn't. A care worker at the home found her online postings and offered her what she wanted at price.

I didn't enjoy this much, mainly because I felt that there wasn't much of plot, mostly the personal views of a disabled woman. The story petered out to no satisfaction and left me wondering whether it needed more substance. I didn't think Shaka's feelings and thoughts were farfetched by any means, but the whole story felt more like a longread fiction piece rather than a novel.