I Who Have Never Known Men
Deluxe Edition
Published on 3. July 2025
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-1-5299-5446-3 (ISBN)
Description
SISTERHOOD. SECRETS. SURVIVAL.
Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation, now available in a beautiful hardback gift edition.
Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?
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. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an 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. The woman who will never know men.
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE WATER CURE
Discover the reader obsession of 2025
**Orlanda, the next sensation from Jacquline Harpman, is available now**
Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation, now available in a beautiful hardback gift edition.
Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?
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. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an 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. The woman who will never know men.
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE WATER CURE
Discover the reader obsession of 2025
**Orlanda, the next sensation from Jacquline Harpman, is available now**
Reviews / Votes
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 goMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 204 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
284 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5299-5446-3 (9781529954463)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Jacqueline Harpman
I Who Have Never Known Men
Book
07/2024
Vintage Classics
€13.00
Available immediately
E-Book
05/2019
Vintage Digital
€8.99
Available for download
Persons
Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium in 1929. Being half Jewish, the family fled to Casablanca when the Nazis invaded, and only returned home after the war. After studying French literature she started training to be a doctor, but could not complete her training 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 Medicis 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