Product details My Dreadful Body Binding: Paperback "A potent portrait of illness and gender oppression . . . This passionate and lyrical work packs a stinging punch."—Publishers Weekly A dazzling debut novel about a young woman's vexed coming of age in a traditional Azerbaijani community in Russia, grappling under the weight of Muslim patriarchal norms and a debilitating neurological condition. The mysterious affliction leaves her unable to control her muscles, plagued by pain and speech disorders, defying diagnosis. Addressing each body part with the scrupulousness of a medical researcher, the narrator explores memories, traditions, and taboos related to her physical self. In the process, a woman once destined for the role of a beautiful marriageable daughter comes to be perceived as damaged goods. With verbal elegance and poetic power, Egana Djabbarova unveils a hidden world in which illness unexpectedly facilitates her liberation. Her book stands in the proud tradition of confessional feminist writers like Sandra Cisneros, Arundhati Roy, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and Jamaica Kincaid. Reading group guide to My Dreadful Body is available for download free of charge at newvesselpress.com. US Egana Djabbarova, born in 1992 into an Azerbaijani family in Yekaterinburg, Russia, is a poet, essayist, and scholar. She is the author of several collections of poetry. Having been forced to flee Russia in 2024 because of her LGBTQ activism and opposition to the war in Ukraine, she lives in Hamburg, Germany. Lisa C. Haydenis a literary translator who received her MA in Russian literature from the University of Pennsylvania. She spent six years in Moscow and lives in Maine. "Djabbarova debuts with a potent portrait of illness and gender oppression in contemporary Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Russia . . . This passionate and lyrical work packs a stinging punch."—Publishers Weekly "Essential feminist, anticolonial reading . . .My Dreadful Bodyis about power. The power of one nation to colonize another, which is in turn echoed by the power of men to control women. It is about having the power to be in control of one's own body. But it is also about having the power to fight back."—Full Stop "A woman maps cultural expectations and desires onto her ailing body in Egana Djabbarova's singular novel . . . The book blooms . . . An incisive novel,My Dreadful Bodycelebrates women's agency, mourns physical losses, and rebels against inherited boundaries."—Foreword Reviews(Starred review) "A gripping, vivid novel that is both a lament and a celebration of how a woman's body binds her to Azerbaijani tradition, and frees her from it. Egana Djabarrova's writing is in turn devastating and hopeful; plainspoken and elegiac. I've never read anything like it."—Claire Oshetsky, author of Poor Deer and Evil Genius "Egana Djabbarova's wild fever dream of a novel lays bare a world where female utterance is seismic, its eruption a shock of radicalizing violence. In prose marked by intimacy, restraint, and terror,My Dreadful Bodyintroduces a writer of astounding intelligence and power. I could not put it down."—Honor Moore, author ofA Termination "An exquisite Bildungsroman by an exceptional author reading her own body as the bearer of inherited stigmas, offering a thought-provoking journey into what it's like to grow up as a stranger."—Sergei Lebedev, author ofOblivionandUntraceable "This tour de force short novel recounts the narrator Egana's various neurological disorders . . . It's like discovering over time from a charming, Djabbarova, Egana ISBN: 9781954404410

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