I Who Have Never Known Men

It is a novel about community, loneliness, and solitude, about intellectual awakening in impossible situations. It asks… What does it mean to be alive, to learn, to know? – Carmen Maria Machado
A novel that takes you into philosophically interesting territory… this [is a] intriguingly dark thought experiment told by a compellingly alien voice – dispassionate and unfussy – is strangely fascinating * The Times *
A vivid evocation of another world, alive with hope and dignity
A bleak but fascinating postapocalyptic novel… all the loneliness and oblivion of a deserted world won’t stop us from following the narrator as far as she can go

Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium in 1929. Being half Jewish, her family fled to Casablanca when the Nazis invaded, and only returned home after the war. After studying French literature, she began training to be a doctor but was unable to complete her studies due to contracting tuberculosis.

She turned to writing in 1954, and her first work was published in 1958. In 1980, she qualified as a psychoanalyst. Harpman wrote over 15 novels and won numerous literary prizes, including the Prix Médicis for Orlanda. I Who Have Never Known Men was her first novel to be translated into English and was originally published with the title The Mistress of Silence.

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