Ugliness

“An intense reading experience presenting the human body as a foreign specimen under the surveillance of judging, watchful eyes … Ugliness is for readers not afraid of feeling unsettled when looking into the mirror of society’s grotesque views.”-Booklist

“Thoughtful and compelling … poetic and political, attentive and meticulous, Hilal’s genre-bending text is an invitation to face our fears–so we can finally stop projecting them … It’s refreshing to get our hands on literature so daring, so fearless.”–Asymptote

“A thoughtful, provocative, playful, and truly original exploration of bodily aesthetics and the factors that define them. A wondrous and important book.”–Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and Body Work

“How can ugly people become beautiful? Moshtari Hilal’s brilliant (and perfectly illustrated) Ugliness has finally appeared in English. Her rumination on what makes us think that we are ugly, that we don’t fit in, that all stare at us or indeed avoid looking at us, provides personal and historical insights into our fantasies about ourselves.”–Sander Gilman, author of Making the Body Beautiful. A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery

“Hilal has managed to distort beauty and to beautify ugliness with her probing narrative and astute gaze. This is a profound, political, engrossing work.”–Aysegüuuml;l Savas, author of The Anthropologists and Walking on the Ceiling

“Cultural commentary intermixes with poetry, visual art, and personal and political musings as Hilal moves through time, space, and medium to locate ugliness in every nook she can … Hilal is magnificent.”–The Brooklyn Rail

“A brave, valuable exploration of something we don’t usually want to address, and a thoroughly determined attempt to define the indefinable. Ugliness is truly readable and intelligent.”–Virginia Nicholson, author of All the Rage: Stories from the Frontline of Beauty

“Ugliness is a chronicle of painful confrontations with the brutal, unimaginative regime of white Anglo-European beauty, but it’s also a savage indictment of the kind of power that requires ugliness to function … After reading this book, I’m energized by it. In a world of faux pluralism and filtered, glassy, false surfaces, it’s exciting to be a little ugly.”–Dirt

“Ugliness is a formally inventive work. It’s also both intensely personal and wildly ambitious, a book that leaves the reader impressed with Hilal’s observations about life, appearances, and aesthetics.”–Words Without Borders

“Artist and theorist Moshtari Hilal dismantles the cultural construct of ‘ugliness, ’ examining how beauty norms are weaponized against marginalized identities … A provocative and timely meditation on both her own self-image and the larger beauty industry.”–BeautyMatter

“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

“Ugliness defies categorisation. It is at once autobiographical work, charting Hilal’s

Moshtari Hilal is a visual artist, writer, and curator based in Hamburg and Berlin. Born in Afghanistan, she pursued Islamic studies and political science in Hamburg, Berlin, and London.

Elisabeth Lauffer is the recipient of the 2014 Gutekunst Translation Prize. After graduating from Wesleyan University, she lived in Berlin and then obtained a master’s in education from Harvard.

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