Harpman wrote over 15 novels and won numerous literary prizes, including the Prix Médicis for Orlanda. In 1980 she qualified as a psychoanalyst. She turned to writing in 1954 and her first work was published in 1958. After studying French literature she started training to be a doctor, but could not complete her training due to contracting tuberculosis. Her family fled to Casablanca when the Nazis invaded, and only returned home after the war. I’m clearly giving this a glorious 5 stars.Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium in 1929. I can’t say more without revealing the plot and all but I will say that this is a hugely important read I wished more people would read. I just was impressed by the authors writing ability. But this is such a powerful read in the same similar light if on a very different scope as The Handmaid’s Tale that I didn’t care about the unhappy ending. Why were they imprisoned? Who were those guards?ĭoes it answer everything? No. But once it does you want to find out what happened. A few other reviewers on Goodreads have said that it’s a bit slow to start and I agree. The writing, the tension, and the pacing are all brilliant. I read this after seeing the cover above (my copy is different) and I was immediately “yes, that’s the book to read right now” and I finished it in less than two hours. For 200 pages there’s a lot to unpack here and I’m sure my review isn’t going to bring it justice. It’s a look at humanity and hope and survival of the fittest. I Who Have Never Known Men is a fascinating look at what happens when a society crumbles after all the men have gone, and left the women who were prisoners free to do as they wished.
A masterpiece of trauma, intrigue, and the desperate urge to survive on a (potential) hostile world.* And a touch infuriating that there are not always answers in life. What a heavy punch to the gut this was! I’m still recovering! 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 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. ‘For a very long time, the days went by, each just like the day before, then I began to think, and everything changed’ĭeep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage.
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, MAN BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE WATER CURE TW for death of a loved one, suicide, and starvation Notes: translated from the French in 1995. Genre: Translated, Adult Fiction, Sci-fi/Dystopian
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