Fiction: Saou Ichikawa’s body doubles

Katharine Quarmby
13 March 2025, The Tablet

Disabled people in literature are often portrayed as fearful, to be pitied or desexualised. Disabled people are also often hidden away from public view, something Isawa weaves deftly through the narrative, with her dual focus on physical limits and the desires of the mind.

Hunchback has been described as one of the most important Japanese novels of the twenty-first century. The human body is celebrated in all its treachery, with an unblinking focus on how it can betray desire through its limitations.

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