Classics — The Book Roads

I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman

I Who Have Never Known Men follows an unnamed young woman imprisoned underground with thirty-nine other women. Guarded by silent male soldiers, the women live in a confined space, deprived of privacy, freedom, and meaningful knowledge of the outside world. Unlike her fellow prisoners, who remember their lives before captivity, the narrator has no memories of the world beyond the prison and has never experienced ordinary human relationships. When an unexpected event allows the women to escape, they emerge into an unfamiliar landscape that appears almost entirely devoid of human life. Forced to survive together, they search for answers about their captivity and the fate of humanity, but the world offers few explanations. As time passes, the narrator struggles to understand concepts such as love, sexuality, memory, and death without having experienced them in the ways others have. Blending dystopian fiction with philosophical reflection, Harpman’s novel explores freedom, loneliness, human nature, and what it means to be human when society and its inherited knowledge have disappeared.

Belgium 2022