I Who Have Never Known Men
Thirty-nine women. An underground cage. No memories, no sense of time, and only the faintest shadows of lives once lived. Above them, a world they cannot see, one that may have been emptied by catastrophe or simply forgotten them entirely. Guards watch. Electric light blurs day into night. The years accumulate without count. Then there is the fortieth prisoner. A young girl, set apart, sitting alone in the corner. An outcast. It's she who will ultimately change everything, leading the others upward into a strange, uncertain world that greets them with more questions than answers. Jacqueline Harpman's novel is a quiet, unsettling thing. Post-apocalyptic in setting but deeply interior in feeling, it asks what identity and womanhood mean when stripped of all the usual markers. The prose is spare, even cool, but the emotional undertow is considerable. This is the kind of book that lingers long after you've closed it. A new introduction by Sophie Mackintosh (Booker Prize-longlisted author of The Water Cure) adds welcome context, connecting Harpman's vision to a broader tradition of speculative fiction written by and about women. Originally a word-of-mouth favourite, the novel has found a devoted new audience through social media, and it's easy to understand why. Raw, spare, and genuinely affecting, it rewards careful reading.
- Author: Jacqueline Harpman
- Publisher: Vintage
- Genre: Science Fiction
- ISBN: 978-1529111798
- Pages: 208 pages