My Dreadful Body
Debut novel by Egana Dzhabbarova
ENGLISH AND FRENCH SAMPLES AVAILABLE
Debut novel by Egana Dzhabbarova
ORIGINAL TITLE: Руки женщин моей семьи были не для письма
ORIGINAL PUBLISHER: No Kidding Press, 2023
128 PAGES
RIGHTS SOLD: Portuguese for Brazil (under offer), German (under offer)
ENGLISH AND FRENCH SAMPLES AVAILABLE
“In the oval mirror I saw large, thick, black eyebrows that were, on my mother’s strict orders, not to be plucked. Not only did Allah forbid his creations from changing their bodies—I was not married. After all, the main event in the life of an Azerbaijani girl is her wedding, and this alone grants her the right to make alterations, even if Allah does not approve of them. In small mountain towns, you could easily distinguish an unmarried, innocent girl from a married woman: the first and most important tell was their eyebrows.”
A dazzling debut novel that navigates the difficulties of coming of age as a young woman in the traditionalistic Azerbaijani community all the while creating a cartography of the female body, as it grapples with the weight of patriarchal norms and a mysterious debilitating neurological condition.
The narrator of the novel is burdened with a perplexing array of symptoms. Unable to control her body's muscles, plagued by pain, and grappling with speech disorders, she endures an affliction that defies diagnosis. Until a young doctor enters the scene, his keen eye drawn to her eyebrows.
Addressing each part of the body with the scrupulousness of a researcher, the narrator starts to uncover layers of memories, traditions, norms, and taboos associated with the most personal, fundamental, and inescapable thing a person has—the physical self. In this journey, a woman once destined to fulfil the societal role of a wife becomes marked as damaged goods. This raises a thought-provoking question: amidst the restrictions and deprivations, could this illness hold the unexpected key to liberation?
Growing up at the same time “too Russian” for her Azerbaijani extended family and othered by peers in Russia, the protagonist navigates through the stories of several generations of women, exploring the issues of belonging and alienation, disobedience and survival, and the challenges of inheriting an unchosen legacy.
The narrator of the novel is burdened with a perplexing array of symptoms. Unable to control her body's muscles, plagued by pain, and grappling with speech disorders, she endures an affliction that defies diagnosis. Until a young doctor enters the scene, his keen eye drawn to her eyebrows.
Addressing each part of the body with the scrupulousness of a researcher, the narrator starts to uncover layers of memories, traditions, norms, and taboos associated with the most personal, fundamental, and inescapable thing a person has—the physical self. In this journey, a woman once destined to fulfil the societal role of a wife becomes marked as damaged goods. This raises a thought-provoking question: amidst the restrictions and deprivations, could this illness hold the unexpected key to liberation?
Growing up at the same time “too Russian” for her Azerbaijani extended family and othered by peers in Russia, the protagonist navigates through the stories of several generations of women, exploring the issues of belonging and alienation, disobedience and survival, and the challenges of inheriting an unchosen legacy.
I have been thinking about how to define Egana’s writing and invented a term: autotheoretical ornament. Egana’s hands weave a dance about the body, culture, pain and love. If you observe this movement closely you might come to paradoxical discoveries: muteness speaks, and the affliction that incapacitates the body opens the way to liberation.
— Oksana Vasyakina, author of Wound (Catapult, 2023)