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. 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. 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. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Translated from the French, I Who Have Never Known Men is a radiant, austere post-apocalyptic novel that poses profound questions about hope, surrender, beauty, loss, and the meaning of community.ĭisclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. I had nothing else to do in it but continue my journey.” They glimpse scant moments of beauty-a remembered hymn the “changing shapes of the clouds, softly falling rain…slowly moving stars, and a few flowers.”Īs the women age and die, the girl faces the future with the courage of a classic existential hero: “I felt the burden of the inexplicable, of my life, of that world to which I was the sole witness. They also seek hints about the “insoluble mysteries” they face.
They find that the world above ground is as sterile as their prison, a “boundless desolate plain, under a sky that is nearly always grey.” In this strange and barren place, the women build homes, care for each other, and search for other survivors. The women free themselves with keys left, by chance, in the lock. She proves her value as the timekeeper, telling time by counting her heartbeats, and mirrors the passing years as she matures from a child to a woman. With no attachment to the past, the girl feels like an outsider. The women share fleeting memories of a time before they don’t know why they were imprisoned, or where they are. In the beginning, the girl is caged with thirty-nine women in a bleak underground bunker, tended by men guards with a boundless supply of food, water, and electricity. Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men is a brilliant, spare science fiction novel in which a curious girl asks what remains after everything has been stripped away.
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