I Who Have Never Known Men

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Jacqueline Harpman, Ros Schwartz: I Who Have Never Known Men (Paperback, 2019, Vintage)

Paperback, 188 pages

English language

Published May 1, 2019 by Vintage.

ISBN:
978-1-5291-1179-8
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Goodreads:
43208407

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‘For a very long time, the days went by, each just like the day before, then I began to think, and everything changed’

Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. 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.

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. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.

11 editions

reviewed I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Philosophical Thought Experiment with Sci-Fi Dystopia Trappings

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This is dressed as a sci-fi dystopia, but was very much a meditation on what it means to be human when stripped away from society and what society tells us to value. The protagonist has to carve out meaning in a world that's empty of meaning and conventional sources of it.

I surmised fairly early that this was too artsy/European to give an answer as to the premise, and I was correct.

The book generally was feminist, but less gender-specific and more universal than I expected. Late in the novel she reads Shakespeare and Don Quixote, and it's interesting to me that, never having heard a man's voice, she likely would have imagined all of the characters sounding like women.

Found it strange that the other women never named the protagonist.

Audiobook narration was well done and the reader did not try to perform in a way that was distracting.

Subjects

  • Fiction, fantasy, general
  • New York Times reviewed