We Were Forbidden - Jacqueline Harpman

Biographical Note:

Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929. Her family fled to Casablanca when the Nazis invaded, and only returned home after the war. After studying French literature she started training to be a doctor, but could not complete her training due to contracting tuberculosis. She turned to writing in 1954 and her first work was published in 1958. In 1980 she qualified as a psychoanalyst. Harpman wrote over 15 novels and won numerous literary prizes, including the Prix Médicis for Orlanda. I Who Have Never Known Men was her first novel to be translated into English, and was originally published with the title The Mistress of Silence. Harpman died in 2012.

Ros Schwartz has translated numerous works of fiction and non-fiction from French, including Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men, 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.

Review Quotes:
Praise for We Were Forbidden

"Dystopian literary surrealism from a master who's belatedly getting her due."-- The New York Times Book Review

"Across these works, Harpman traces variations of the same psychic drama. Her dystopias diagnose the mind under pressure... Having lived through displacement, illness, and the violence of institutions, Harpman understands how quickly prohibitions take root. The world may collapse, but the mind continues to enforce its codes."-- Petya K. Grady, The Believer

"In Harpman's desperate, ornery, and alien universes, her avatars write their memoirs for no one at all. It is a desolate prospect, but also a triumph." --Jessi Jezewska Stevens, 4Columns

"Reading [Harpman's] prose, one is reminded of Robert Coover or Donald Barthelme, those other masters of the seriously weird and yet wonderfully fun, transgressive, idea-driven tale . . . Like going to the church we always wished we'd had."-- Liz Wood, Words Without Borders

"With this collection, readers are afforded intimacy with Harpman the woman, who felt and thought more than what can be gleaned from the postapocalyptic tragedy that has made her a sensation."-- Emily Wood, The Toronto Review

★ "Another stunning missive from Harpman's repertoire... Renewed interest in Harpman's oeuvre isn't just warranted: In works like this, she reveals herself to be one of the major writers of the 20th century, comparable to Gogol and Kafka but with a style and outlook entirely her own."-- Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"The three female protagonists in this sharp-edged triptych push back against the political, educational, and sexual regimes, respectively, that govern their lives... wry and metafictional; this is transfixing."-- Publishers Weekly

★ "Enigmatic and cartwheeling. Harpman's splendid novellas explore refusal in its collective and personal forms--a piercing commentary on human compulsions to duty." --Foreword Reviews, starred review

"These tales showcase a new side of Harpman's prose... Full of nuance and spite, and true to Harpman's beloved style." --Booklist

"Post-apocalyptic science fiction, like John Wyndham; humorous and incisive, like Don Quixote." --Library Journal

Praise for I Who Have Never Known Men

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

"All the loneliness and oblivion of a deserted world won't stop us from following the narrator as far as she can go. . . Each revelation that directs her steps is a small miracle."--The New York Times

"A consistently gripping experience."--Times Literary Supplement

"Imagination. Jacqueline Harpman certainly doesn't lack any. . . With incredible mastery, she juggles with identities, intertwines desires and fears, fantasies and frustrations."--L'Express

"[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

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

Review Citations:

• Publishers Weekly 05/11/2026 (EAN 9798893380583, Paperback)
• Shelf Awareness 12/30/0001 (EAN 9798893380583, Paperback)
• Library Journal 05/22/2026 pg. 1 (EAN 9798893380583, Paperback)
• Booklist 06/01/2026 (EAN 9798893380583, Paperback)
• Kirkus Reviews 06/15/2026 (EAN 9798893380583, Paperback) - *Starred Review
• Foreword 06/27/2026 (EAN 9798893380583, Paperback)