I Who Have Never Known Men: A Novel [Hardcover]

Jacqueline Harpman (Author), Ros Schwartz (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 1997

A work of fantasy, I Who Have Never Known Men is the haunting and unforgettable account of a near future on a barren earth where women are kept in underground cages guarded by uniformed groups of men. It is narrated by the youngest of the women, the only one with no memory of what the world was like before the cages, who must teach herself, without books or sexual contact, the essential human emotions of longing, loving, learning, companionship, and dying. Part thriller, part mystery, I Who Have Never Known Men shows us the power of one person without memories to reinvent herself piece by piece, emotion by emotion, in the process teaching us much about what it means to be human.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

I Who Have Never Known Men is the first of Jacqueline Harpman's 10 novels to be translated from French. It is a chilling, surreal, speculative fiction as well as a novel of ideas. The story takes place after some unspecified great disaster--pandemic? global warming? nuclear holocaust?--and concerns a group of 40 women kept alive in an underground bunker. The women are watched over by mute, whip-toting male guards. The youngest woman in the group has no memory of life above ground and her elders conceal as much as they reveal about their predisaster lives. I Who Have Never Known Men examines the roles of context and history in making us who we are.

From Library Journal

Imagine that you lose everything: your family, your home, even your memory. Could you survive, or, perhaps more importantly, would you want to? French writer Harpman (Orlando, Stock, 1996), a Prix Medicis winner, addresses this question in her new novel. Narrated by a nameless female, the story serves as a backdrop for examining the human condition. The narrator's memories begin with imprisonment in a cage, where she is the only child among 39 women. One day the captives escape, only to spend the rest of their existence wandering across an unknown land. Harpman uses their experience to pose the question, What is it that makes us human? Our ability to love, our need for companionship, our reliance on hope? In fact, all are essential to the human character. Every incident in this riveting narrative is significant. For instance, Harpman uses a scene as simple as the prisoners' mealtime to show that humans rely heavily on companionship. Carefully crafted, this novel is both unusual and thought-provoking. Recommended.?Erin Cassin, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press; First Edition edition (April 8, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1888363436
• ISBN-13: 978-1888363432
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #510,391 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emotionally shattering, psychologically mesmerizing, January 17, 2001

By 

Dianora (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Who Have Never Known Men (Mass Market Paperback)

This book affected me in a way no book has in a very long time. Ms. Harpman raises more questions than she answers, but that is the true achievement of this work -- that long after I had finished, it continued to mystify and provoke. The prose is confident, beautiful, compelling and captivating. The protagonist's situation is maddening, absurd, frustrating, and heartbreaking, and you will try right along with her to unravel its impenetrable mysteries. But in the end, the absurd situation is not what's important, but rather one woman's quest for identity and humanity in a world where identity is suppressed and humanity is a riddle. You will experience every moment of the narrative as if you were right there with this woman, unseen and unheard, leaving her in stark aloneness even as you hover beside her. If you are looking for an easy read with a happy ending, this is not for you, but if you are looking for an incredibly rendered narrative that raises questions of identity, freedom, knowledge, love, empathy, and dignity, give this book a chance -- you won't regret it. It's hard to believe one can =enjoy= a book so bleak and without hope, but once it grabs hold of you it doesn't let go until the very last word. A haunting tale, a gripping science fiction novel and an impressive achievement. I can't recommend it highly enough.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sublime Metaphor - A Classic Revisited, July 26, 2007

By 

Warlen Bassham (Bothell, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Who Have Never Known Men (Mass Market Paperback)

I first read this translation soon after it came out and kept it handy, knowing that I would want to re-read it someday. Well, 'someday' arrived this week, and I would now like to share my take on what is going on in this extended literary metaphor that has quietly gained a small but committed fandom, matching its quietly forceful approach to its subject.

[Why only four stars for a Classic?-- because the same oddities that make the book strong also provide its primary weakness: The same lack of scope and resolution that provides the book's intense focus, and emotional force, deprive it of the sort of huge impact that such a work probably deserves.]

Forty women live in an deep-underground 'bunker,' guarded by men whose only communication with them is the cracking of whips. Artificially shortened days and nights governed by automatic lights control their lives. They are given two austere meals per day and expected to cook the food themselves. They are denied privacy regarding any aspect of their existence, are forcibly touch-deprived, are not allowed to cry, and, most horribly of all, are forced to keep living even when they wish to die.

Actually, the forty women consist of thirty-nine mature women, plus one girl, known only as The Child. She remembers nothing of life before her imprisonment, and none of them understand why they are in this confinement nor do they remember what led up to it. Nor does anyone know the Child's name, least of all herself.

When, eventually, a freak chance to escape leads to their permanent emergence above ground, they embark on an extended journey which provides no substantial clues to their history, and which in the end merely substitutes another kind of imprisonment for the previous.

Not exactly a tale of hope or cheer!

Yet, somehow, the story is not depressing. In fact, it feels quite hopeful in the end, for no reason immediately apparent.

Which made me think: What is the book REALLY about?!?

At one superficial level, it seems to be a feminist tract similar in a few ways to Atwood's 'Handmaid's Tale.' There are also absurdist echoes from such authors as Kafka. And yet, the thought keeps nagging me that there is far more to this book than those superficial comparisons would suggest.

What I believe it actually is [in ADDITION to being absurdist and feminist, not as opposed to those genres] is a metaphor for the human search for meaning in an appallingly alien universe. Our cosmology, whether religious or scientific, often seems fragile and vulnerable in the face of the immense scope and incredibly varied nature of the setting we find ourselves in. We speculate a lot about the meaning of life, where we came from, where we're going, etc., etc. But in reality we have no more clue to all this than those forty female characters which Harpman describes so lovingly do to their own enigmas.

To make sure the reader gets the point, the author has deliberately withheld the kind of detail that would lend 'realism' to this not-quite-science-fiction tale. The Child who is also the book's narrator is far more erudite and eloquent than any real person in this harrowing experience, with its lack of education and experience, would be capable of being. The totally-unexplained disappearance of the guards which enables the women's 'escape' is so impossible [and so convenient] as to take on an air of fantasy. Equally unrealistic is the fact that not one of these women has any memory of how they got from their former [and 'normal'] lives to this hell-hole existence on what may or may not be 'another planet.' And the capper is that the electricity supply is magically endless and faultless, although no source or means of distribution for it is ever discovered or explained. [Just as there is no real explanation for what caused the Big Bang or how so-called Dark Energy causes the expansion of the universe continually to accelerate.]

Reviewers who have complained about lack of resolution are missing the point: There can be no resolution in a metaphor for cosmology, because we do not yet know enough about our own existence in the universe to interpret it with any kind of confidence to ourselves.

Is there a moral to this far-from-plotless tale of ennui and purposelessness? Yes, I believe there is. Someone once said that the point of travel lies in discovering that the journey is more important than the destination. Just as this book tells us that Living-- mere Living-- IS the Meaning of Life.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing! One of my favoriate books!, September 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: I Who Have Never Known Men (Mass Market Paperback)

I bought this book on a whim, and sat down one night to read it. I found myself unable to put it down. Remarkably there were moments that I had to put the book down to collect myself, and was surprised to find myself where I was, and not locked in a bunker, or trying to make sense out of an unapoligetic and bleak life. To think of life that was marred so early and so deeply is shocking. The empathy I felt for the narrator, although almost foreign, as her experiences and thoughts were also foreign, was tangible. The haunted feeling I had while reading it, and the emotions it creates are intense and unforgettable. I loved this book. It is one that I know will stay with me, and I can only look forward to future english translations from this immensely talented writer. I cannot reccommend it enough!