""The longer I lived, the more my body collapsed into an ever more aberrant shape. It wasn't collapsing into death. Rather, it collapsed so as to live, collapsed as testament to all the time I'd withstood. That made my disability decisively different from the fatal diseases or decrepitude of ageing which the able-bodied might experience, where these was variation only in timing"

Hunchback (written in Japanese by Saou Ichikawa and translated by Polly Barton), was narrated from the perspective of Shaka Isawa, a woman in her 40s, and was confined to a care home because of myotubular myopathy. The care home was set up by her wealthy parents and she was left with a huge inheritance from her parents. Due to her condition, her spine is S-shaped and she relies heavily on a wheelchair as well as a ventilator. She filled her days by taking online university courses and more importantly, writing sex journalism and posting provocative tweets (for instance, "My ultimate dream is to get pregnant and have an abortion, just like a normal woman"). One day, a male nurse, Tanaka discovered her erotic posts and Shaka offered to pay him for sex, which Tanaka agreed. However, the sexual encounter went wrong and almost killed Shaka.

In the span of only 97 pages, Ichikawa delivered a very thought provoking, unsettling, yet powerful read. It is apparent that Hunchback explored the situation of a disabled person in the Japanese society ("Japan…works on the understanding that disabled people don’t exist within society..."), the theme of ableism, desires (from the perspective of a disabled person, especially their desire to perform acts, such as sexual acts, and having reproductive rights like any normal person), the power play between able and disabled bodies, and between the wealthy and the working class (through the relationship between Shaka and Tanaka). Ichikawa went a step further to explore ableism in the publishing and literary world as well as the reading culture: "Able-bodied Japanese people have likely never even imagined a hunchbacked monster struggling to read a physical book. Here was I, feeling my spine being crushed a little more with every book I read, while all those e-book-hating able-bodied people who went on and on and on about how they loved the smell of physical books, for the feel of the turning pages beneath their fingers, persisted in their state of happy oblivion"; "When I read a book my spine would bend, crushing my lung, puncturing a hole in my throat; when I walked I banged my head - to live, my body breaks. What is the difference between taking life from a body like that, over a body that flourishes to exist?" The conduct of writing sex journalism and posting provocative and erotic tweets are metaphors revealing Shaka's desires, her rage against ableism and the societal conventions which favor able-bodied person. Hunchback, claimed by Ichikawa that it is 30% autobiographical (as Ichikawa herself has congenital myopathy and uses a wheelchair and a respirator), is truly a bold, provocative masterpiece. A strong 4.8/5 star read to me! Now longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize and it is my personal pick for the shortlist as well. "

Khai Jian (KJ) wants to read The World After Gaza: A Short History

""She woke with the thirst already upon her, still in her clothes, cold from having slept on top of the covers. Two days, three, since she had last changed; the smell of her overcast with sweat, fried food, cigarettes. Underwear's stink strong enough that it reached her even before she moved to squat over an old plastic mixing bowl that lived beside the bed. She steadied her weight on the bed frame with one hand, the other holding on to the seat of a wooden chair that creaked as she lowered herself. She didn't have to put the light on, knew by the burn and smell that the urine was dark, dark as cough syrup, as sickness"

Set in a near-future Cape Town, South Africa (in the late 2020s), which is experiencing a years-long drought, wildfires and dire water shortages (which somehow mirror the current state of South Africa), Crooked Seeds follows the story of Deidre van Deventer (aged 53 and a cripple) who is living in a public housing complex (as her family home was reclaimed by the government). Deidre lives alone, where her adopted daughter, Monica, now lives in the UK. Her father has passed away but her mother Trudy, though alive, is suffering from mental illness and staying in a nearby nursing home. One day, Deidre is contacted by the police when several small bodies have been discovered in the garden of her family home after decades underground. She is then questioned by the police regarding her brother (Ross's) involvement in the bombing activities of the pro-Apartheid group in the 1990s. It is revealed throughout the story that Ross was in fact building bombs in their family home and an accident occurred, which resulted in Deidre losing a leg and crippled. Due to the police investigation, Deidre is forced to uncover family secrets from the past.

I instantly fell in love with Karen Jennings' An Island (longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize) and Crooked Seeds is nothing short of an impactful novel. Jennings successfully crafted an unlikeable female character (Deidre), who is traumatized and scarred by the nation's Apartheid policy, politics, grief and South Africa's deeply rooted history of colonialism. The notions of time and memory are well executed when Deidre's past and Trudy's demons (where she constantly imagines that Ross is visiting her in the nursing home) alternate with present events. Trudy is also a memorable character as we slowly understand that she favors Ross even though Ross was responsible for Deidre's accident. Despite being an unlikeable character, Deidre somehow represents the current state of South Africa, a country where it is still haunted by its past, where South Africa is still unable to recover from its previous Apartheid policies and the rage of its citizens (who are deeply affected by this history of colonialism, segregation and discrimination). Crooked Seeds is a 4.5/5 star read to me and I am very happy for Karen Jennings when this is longlisted for the 2025 Womens Prize for Fiction!"