Mona Awad
WINNER OF THE 2016 AMAZON FIRST NOVEL AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2017 STEPHEN LEACOCK MEMORIAL MEDAL FOR HUMOUR
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2018 INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE COLORADO BOOK AWARD FOR LITERARY FICTION
ARAB AMERICAN BOOK AWARD HONORABLE MENTION FOR FICTION
A NATIONAL POST BEST BOOK OF 2016
“Echoes of Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman.” —Irish Times
“You’ll want to grab a friend and say: Woah. This. Exactly.” —The Washington Post
From the author of the TikTok phenomenon Bunny, a darkly funny, deeply resonant novel about the harmful beauty standards imposed on women
Growing up in the suburban hell of Misery Saga (a.k.a. Mississauga), Lizzie has never liked the way she looks. Even when she starts dating guys online, she’s too afraid to send pictures: she knows no one would want her if they could really see her. So she starts to lose. She counts calories consumed, miles logged, pounds lost, raw almonds eaten—she even undertakes an epic battle with a von Furstenberg. But no matter how much weight she loses, will she ever see herself as anything other than a fat girl?
In her brilliant, hilarious, and at times shocking debut, Mona Awad simultaneously skewers the body image-obsessed culture that tells women they have no value outside their physical appearance and delivers a tender and moving depiction of a lovably difficult young woman whose life is hijacked by her struggle to conform.
As caustically funny as it is heartbreaking, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl doesn’t ask whether beauty really is in the eye of the beholder—it shows what we see when we stop thinking of women’s bodies as something to behold.
