Saou Ichikawa

Saou Ichikawa (市川沙央, Ichikawa Saō, born 1979) is a Japanese writer. She is best known for her debut novel Hunchback, for which she won the Akutagawa Prize in 2023.

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Biography

Summarize

Perspective

Ichikawa was born in 1979.^[1] She has congenital myopathy and uses a wheelchair and a respirator.^[2] She has an older sister, who also has congenital myopathy.^[3] She decided to become a novelist at age 20, as she felt her career options were limited due to her disability.^[4] She first began to write light novels, but grew discouraged after a light novel she wrote failed to win a prize, and decided to instead write serious fiction.^[2] She graduated from Waseda University.^[5]

At university, she began to research the representation of disabled people in literature, which inspired the writing of her novel Hunchback,^[2] about a profoundly disabled woman, Izawa, who pays her male caretaker to have sex with her.^[6] Hunchback was published in 2023. The novel was well-received: it sold 230,000 copies;^[1] Japan Times described it as "dark and funny".^[7] She is the first disabled writer to win the Akutagawa Prize.^[6] Novelist Keiichiro Hirano, who was on the jury for the Akutagawa Prize for that year, stated that the book "knocks down conventional wisdom and common sense centered on able-bodied people".^[2] Viking Press acquired the English rights to the novel,^[5] and a translation by Polly Barton was released in 2025. The translation received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, both of which praised the social commentary of the novel.^[8]^[9] The English translation was longlisted for the International Booker Prize; the judges praised Hunchback for its criticism of ableism and sexism.^[10]

Biography

Works

Awards and recognition

References

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