Our narrator is someone who, as the title would suggest, has never known men. At one point, the main character describes a scene before her as ‘incredibly strange, sinister and moving’, and that is exactly how I would describe the experience of reading this book.
Having been so engrossed by Harpman’s work here, this review is an attempt to capture its greatness, which is partly philosophical in nature, without revealing too much. Originally published in French in 1995 under the title Moi qui n’ai pas connu les hommes, this is an incredibly profound dystopian science-fiction novel that I was utterly impressed by. 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.I Who Have Never Known Men is the first book by Belgian author Jacqueline Harpman (1929-2012) to be translated into English (2018). 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. Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others’ escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.
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.Īs 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. Translated from the French by Ros Schwartzĭeep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage.
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