I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
I Who Have Never Known Men was my last read of 2025 and one of my most interesting reads of the year. The post-apocalyptic science fiction novel explores themes of survival, female friendship, and purpose in life in under 200 pages with no chapters and no name given to the main character. This unique novel has an equally special author. Jacqueline Harpman published I Who Have Never Known Men in 1995 in French. Born in Belgium in 1929, Harpman and her parents were Jewish and fled Belgium in 1940 when the Nazis invaded. They spent 5 years living in Morocco, where Harpman faced institutional antisemitism, before moving back to Belgium in 1945 after war ended. As an adult Harpman became a celebrated Belgium author and a professional psychoanalysis. I think Harpman’s background as a psychoanalysis and Holocaust survivor made her uniquely qualified to author one of the most profound and disturbing science fiction novels I’ve read. And I think the internet agreed. Harpman’s novel was translated into English in 1997 by Ros Schwartz. It was then recently re-released in 2022 when dystopian novels were very popular and TikTok users took it from there. The novel went viral, and I was among the many that learned of it.
The novel is written from the point of view of our main character, a teenage girl when the novel opens, and it follows her life from there. The novel is written like her journal entry, looking back on her strange life experience and recording what she lived through. Her story opens as the youngest in a group of 40 women, kept in a locked cage underground, guarded by a rotation of six men. The men never speak to the women, the women don’t know why they are being kept there and they never leave, and the main character has no prior memories before the cage. The older women aren’t able to tell the young girl much anymore about life before the cage, partly because they have a hard time remembering, and partly because the guards crack a whip menacingly when the women begin asking too many questions. The women used to try harder to get out, pleading with the guards, attempting escape, but enough time has passed that they have resigned themselves to this fate. This existence is all our main character has known. The limited education she does possess is thanks to the women in the cage with her.
One day the routine is broken when, as a guard puts the key into the lock of the cage, a siren the women have never heard before goes off. The guard turns and runs, leaving the key. This is it, a miracle they didn’t think possible. They unlock the cage and our main character is the first one to exit, venturing towards the door with the other women trailing behind. What they find is a staircase that leads them outside to hills of grass in every direction, but no other buildings or people are visible. The women are at first elated – they are free! They gather supplies from the storage closets they found where they were being kept and slowly begin to explore the area. It does not take long for the women’s hope to drop as they discover there is nothing else around, they even wonder if they are on a different planet than Earth. The guards are nowhere to be found, nor is any type of technology. The only thing they do find is other bunkers with cages like their own, some filled with 40 women like theirs, others with 40 men. Sadly, these captives didn’t have the luck of a guard happening to unlock the cage at the right moment: they’ve all died locked inside.
Years pass like this. The women build a small community of homes, find more empty bunkers, and most accept this is all there is; no one is coming for them, no one is here with them, they are alone and will always be so. Years go on and they all pass away until only our main character is left. She was the only one that still questioned maybe something is out there to find, something that will explain why this has happened, why they are all there. She leaves the homes they built and begins walking, exploring further than ever before. Everything is the same, grassy hills, until she eventually finds an underground bunker clearly designed for someone in charge: endless amounts of food, a kitchen, a bed with nice bedding, and a bathroom, all things she’s never experienced. This is also where she finds paper and pen, and after years spent alone in this bunker, decides to write everything down should anyone find it after she is gone.
I read a review of this book that described it as “quietly devastating” and I think that is the best way to sum up this novel. Harpman created a story that had me saying wow, just…wow. This isn’t a typical read. The premise of the main character knowing very little creates a reading experience where the reader likewise has the same questions she does, but they never get answered. Instead the reader spends time in the main character’s head, absorbing her thoughts and emotions, and also wondering what happened here to create this situation, but there is never the satisfaction of knowing. The novel spends years with the main character as she tries to create some semblance of a meaningful life with the situation she has been dealt. This is a haunting speculative fiction novel specifically focused on women and I recommend it to anyone wanting a moving read that won’t be easy to forget. I think the fact that this 30-year old Belgium novel went viral on one of the biggest social media sites says a lot, and I’m glad for it because I ended 2025 with one of my favorite reads of the year.
Review by Sarah Turner-Hill, Adult Programming Coordinator
