I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman

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Brief Description:
"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."--Back cover.

Review Quotes:

"A small miracle . . . I Who Have Never Known Men is about as heavyhearted as fiction can get."-New York Times

"Mesmerizing. . . . The book's austere mystery--the atrophied and gelid world it depicts--provides a richly allusive consideration of human life."--Deborah Eisenberg, New York Review of Books

"A consistently gripping experience."―TLS

"Like Kafka with a dash of Ursula Le Guin, this story is part mystery, part science fiction, and all literature."--Booklist

"Reading I Who Have Never Known Men forces the reader to contemplate what an immense privilege it is to be able to read books at all."--Emily Gould, The Cut

"[I] couldn't put it down. . . . It's a deceptively simple but wholly propulsive story that explores the interplay between memory, patriarchy and solidarity."--Laila Lalami, author of The Dream Hotel

"Immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale."--Kirkus Reviews

"Evocative and thrilling, it's a dystopian modern classic."--Dua Lipa'sService95 Book Club

"Harpman says here all there is to say about dignity and the difficulty of remaining human in the face of suffering."--Le Quotidien

"It is surprising that a book with the psychological detail of a nightmare elicits in the reader feelings of such profound intensity."--Le Monde

"The delirium of I Who Have Never Known Men suggests the work of a feminine Kafka."--Le Nouvel Observateur

"[A] riveting narrative. . . . Carefully crafted, this novel is both unusual and thought-provoking."--Library Journal

"Unlike other science fiction or fantasy novels, this is a universe without an invented order: there is no known infrastructure, no reveal, no men hiding behind a curtain. It is the simplicity of the writing that makes my skin crawl, so eerie in its absences."--Haley Mlotek, Frieze

"[An] eerily evocative novel . . . this intriguingly dark thought experiment told by a compellingly alien voice--dispassionate and unfussy--is strangely fascinating."--Lucy Scholes, The Times

"A vivid evocation of another world, alive with hope and dignity in the midst of cruelty and alienation. . . . A haunting testimony from an abandoned planet."--Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From

Biographical Note:

JACQUELINE HARPMAN (1929-2012) was a Belgian author of over fifteen novels. Born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, she fled to Casablanca with her family during the Second World War. She studied French literature and trained to become a doctor but was unable to continue her medical studies after contracting tuberculosis. Harpman began writing in 1954, and wrote over fifteen novels, winning numerous prizes, including the Prix Médicis (Orlanda), the Prix Victor-Rossel (Brève Arcadie), among others. I Who Have Never Known Men, originally published in French in 1995, was the first of her books to be translated into English.

ROS SCHWARTZ has translated numerous works of fiction and non-fiction from French, including several Georges Simenon titles for Penguin Classics, a new translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince and, most recently, Mireille Gansel's Translation as Transhumance. The recipient of a number of awards, she was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2009 and received the Institute of Translation and Interpreting's John Sykes Memorial Prize for Excellence in 2017.

Brief Description:

Ursula K. LeGuin meets The Road in a post-apocalyptic modern classic of female friendship and intimacy.

Review Quotes:

"A small miracle . . . I Who Have Never Known Men is about as heavyhearted as fiction can get."--New York Times