JACQUELINE
HARPMAN
I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN
Translation Myrsini Gkana
But the youngest among them, the unnamed narrator known only as “the child,” remembers nothing at all. Isolated from the others, she slowly awakens to consciousness and to the mysteries of the world around her — until the day the women discover, without warning, that the door of their cell has been left open.
I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting and visionary work of feminist and existential dystopian fiction by the Belgian novelist and psychoanalyst Jacqueline Harpman. First published in 1995, the novel stands alongside the works of Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Octavia E. Butler in its profound exploration of freedom, memory, and what it means to remain human in a shattered world.
