Review of Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa

*Hunchback* by Saou Ichikawa, translated by Polly Barton (2025). Published by Hogarth.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

As a book blogger, something I’ve always been super clear about and dedicated towards promoting are local libraries. I know having access to a good library is a privilege, and there are countries where people don’t really have access to books at all. I am so grateful every day that I have access to a decent library system, especially in today’s world.

My library system has been a godsend during this time of unemployment, as well as the blog, because if I had nothing to do or read, I would actually go mad with boredom. Reading has kept me in touch with the world and my dreams, especially as a writer, as it feels so easy to give up sometimes with the doom and gloom of politics today.

I always wander the new fiction section immediately when I enter the library, so when I went this time, I was pleasantly surprised to spot a copy of Hunchback. As someone majorly tuned into Asian literature and cinema, I always know what the new releases are, especially if they’re coming from Japan or Korea. So I knew about Hunchback before I even saw it at the library, and knew I wanted to read it then and there.

This is a short read, clocking in at about ninety pages total, but there’s a lot to unpack with this novel. Let’s get into the review!

A disabled woman, despite her condition, sees no limit to what she can do—including getting pregnant.

Something to note about this book before we get into the thick of things: the author herself is actually a disabled person living in Japan, so the publication of this book and the attention it has received is actually groundbreaking in so many ways. Even in American and English publishing, these kinds of perspectives are rare, but this book especially gets attention because the main character has a sexual appetite—something most don’t even consider when thinking about disabled people and what they want and desire from others.

Shaka is the main character of this brief little novel, and she was born with a congenital muscle disorder that leaves her unable to walk on her own. She uses a wheelchair to get around, and because she’s unable to breathe without assistance, she has to use a ventilator in her daily life.

That doesn’t stop her from doing and getting what she wants though. She takes classes at universities on her iPad and excels in the coursework she does have, and she even has a job as a writer for an erotic website. Her work can be quite popular, and so she runs a Twitter account on the side where she basically professionally trolls the world.

The stuff she Tweets can be outlandish and out there, but Shaka is also trying to see if anyone out there is watching or paying attention to her. It can be quite lonely living in a Japanese care facility, cut off from the rest of the world, so these help Shaka with her circumstances.

It’s when she Tweets she wants a sperm donor that everything begins to change. She offers a lot of money, as Shaka is actually quite wealthy for her situation, and one of the aides/nurses at her facility realizes that it’s her Tweeting all of these things into the void.

He approaches her in pursuit of the money and offers to be her sperm donor. Shaka’s real agenda is she wants to try being pregnant, even in her condition and if it kills her in the end.

What happens from their interaction will create a ripple effect in her life, some of which is expected, others not as much. All of the main plot is interspersed with literature she wrote for the website, some journalism, others fiction, which offers a specific insight into her mind. As a writer myself, I’ve always said the best ways to understand writers and their brains, what’s going on in there, is to read their writing.

So I get why the author included those texts, even though they can seem a little out of place at times. But because this book is so short, it can be a little much in such a short amount of time.

Overall Thoughts

I think this is a novel English speaking audiences are either going to love or hate, with the opinions on it being polarizing. I did not love or hate this book specifically, but was somewhere in the middle. I can really appreciate the perspective it’s telling and the form of representation the novel has become—we don’t get books about disabled people and their desire often.

At the same time, I do wish this was longer and we got to spend more time with Shaka. I think with its current length I was left with more questions than answers, so if we had room to expand the story and learn more about her, as well as the nurse she recruited as her sperm donor, then we could have had a bigger picture moment.

I do kind of get why the author made this so short though in the end. I just wish we had more time with this story and characters, as it felt a tad too rushed at times. We’ve already pushed the boundaries of societal expectations and what we can and cannot say, so let’s go a step further.

If Hunchback is something that seems like it would be interesting to you, I recommend picking it up and giving it a shot at your local library or indie bookstore. It’s a short read, so you can get through it fairly quickly.

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