A haunting meditation on selfhood and resilience, and a master work of dystopian speculative fiction, this book left me with more questions than answers. Nonetheless, I raced through it just a few hours, desperate to find out what becomes of the women trapped within these pages, and within their own cruel circumstance.
— Melanie
I'm very rarely at a loss for words, but this book left me speechless. I recommend going into it blind. Trust me on this one, it is freaky and phenomenal.
— Quinn
I swallowed this novel whole as it played out before me like a piece of cinema. Our narrator, fated to a life of captivity, displays inner strength and imagination that knows no bounds. It is a story that emphasizes the journey rather than the reason. Where there are beating hearts, there is desire, love, and the quest for companionship.
— Maci
A quiet, dystopian meditation on femininity without the imposition of the male gaze, time as a social construct, and the meaning of a life not witnessed.
— Marion
Like Markson's WITTGENSTEIN'S MISTRESS or Morselli's DISSIPATIO H.G., Harpman here seeks answers to questions such as, "What would life be like, once completely devoid of community, culture, and care?" Spoiler alert: it wouldn't be great.
— MaxUrsula K. LeGuin meets The Road in a post-apocalyptic modern classic of female friendship and intimacy.
Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.
As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl-the fortieth prisoner--sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.
Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman's modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.