Description from Goodreads
‘Without mud, the lotus could not survive.’
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 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 21st century, Hunchback is an extraordinary, thrilling glimpse into the desire and darkness of a woman placed at humanity’s edge.
My Thoughts on the Book
Alright, how to say this without sounding like a total arsehole? It's important with disabled voices and showing that they're humans with sexual needs, just like ablebodied people, but this book had some room for improvement in my eyes.
While there's plenty of well-written novellas out there, Hunchback had the first draft-vibe to it, with some shock factor. Don't get me wrong, sometimes shock factor is needed to get the point across (and I've read and enjoyed several shocking books), but in Hunchback, it didn't quite fit. If the theme(s) had been explored in a different way, I think it could have worked better. That Hunchback is such a short text, makes it also too shallow/surface level for such an important topic. Although I read a translation of Hunchback, the prose and language didn't make up for the short length of the book.
In my opinion, the concept and the message is there, but as someone who has a major in (English) literature, my mental check-list for a great book wasn't met.
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