Excerpt from Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I saved the document and closed the WordPress editing screen, then set the iPad mini I'd been holding in both hands down onto the toweling blanket drawn across my stomach. While I'd been concentrating on getting to the end of the article, mucus had built up in my windpipe, and the alarm on my Trilogy ventilator was chirruping furiously. I inserted the suction catheter to drain off the mucus—the air entering through the ventilator tube for the best part of twenty minutes had whipped it up to a foamy texture—reconnected the ventilator to my tracheostomy tube, then picked up my iPhone from beside my bed and opened the chat app that I used for work.

I've just submitted the first half of the Swingers' Club piece. Do let me know your thoughts when you have a moment.

Once again I suctioned off the mucus rising up, and this time, immediately felt the oxygen moving to my brain. Yeah, that felt—good.

Thanks very much. Can I ask you to deliver the second half by the end of the week, along with both the Fukuoka and Nagasaki editions of the Top 20 Pickup Spots?

Yes, that's no problem. I'll have all three of them to you by Saturday.

I picked up the iPad mini and once again logged in to WordPress. Among the list of articles created by the editorial department, which were so far just a bunch of titles inserted into templates, I tapped on the words reading "Fukuoka Edition" in order to assign Buddha as editor. That was my account name—Buddha. For twenty-nine years now, I have been residing in Nirvana. Ever since the day that my under­developed muscles had prevented my heart and lungs from maintaining a normal level of oxygen saturation, and I'd grown faint and passed out by the classroom window in my second year of middle school.

Excerpted from Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa. Copyright © 2025 by Saou Ichikawa. Excerpted by permission of Hogarth Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.