Ugliness

By: Moshtari Hilal, Elisabeth Lauffer (Translator)

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Paperback | 11 February 2025

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224 Pages

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20.3 x 13.3 x 1.2

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How do power and beauty join forces to determine who is considered ugly? What role does that ugliness play in fomenting hatred? Moshtari Hilal, an Afghan-born author and artist who lives in Germany, has written a touching, intimate, and highly political book. Dense body hair, crooked teeth, and big noses: Hilal uses a broad cultural lens to question norms of appearance ostensibly her own, but in fact everyone's. She writes about beauty salons in Kabul as a backdrop to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Darwin's theory of evolution, Kim Kardashian, and a utopian place in the shadow of her nose. With a profound mix of essay, poetry, her own drawings, and cultural and social history of the body, Hilal explores notions of repulsion and attraction, taking the reader into the most personal of realms to put self-image to the test. Why are we afraid of ugliness?

'A sweeping meditation on a subject rarely addressed...Hilal takes on our beauty-worshipping celebrity culture and the beauty industry for...keeping women in an expensive prison of self-doubt...Ugliness makes a 'big picture' argument, panning outward from one young woman's life to some of the largest issues we confront globally hence to all of our lives.' Rhonda Garelick in The New York Times

Industry Reviews

"An unflinching, politically charged visual and textual exploration into the norms of appearance. Awarded the Hamburg Literature Prize 2023 for non-fiction, the book explores who we are putting at the end of accusations of ugliness, and why."--GQ Middle East

"Deals with the concept of ugliness and what responsibility society has toward bodies deemed to be 'ugly.' It's about the meaning of beauty, growing up and coming to terms with ugliness."--Vogue Germany

"What makes Ugliness special is the unconventional form of the text: a mixture of essayistic passages, autobiographical writing, poems, personal photos and collages, in which the author's nose often can be seen . . . The personal mixes with the researched, the stylized with the academic. Ugliness should therefore also be understood as a work of art, not just as a non-fiction book. As this hybrid, Ugliness is captivating."--S?ddeutsche Zeitung

"People still endure massive pain just to avoid being considered ugly. There is a reason for this, concludes Moshtari Hilal: beauty needs ugliness. Her book is a revelation, an eye-opener, a slap in the face."--Westdeutscher Rundfunk

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