I Who Have Never Known Men by Jaqueline Harpman

Original title: Moi qui n'ai pas connu les hommes

Format: 188 pages, Paperback

Published: January 1, 2019 by Vintage

Sci-fi/fiction/dystopia/own

This book was amazing and just blew me away in its quietness. Its prose was lyrical, and I had as many questions going in as going out. That I understand is something that people would have an issue with. But for me it just made the book better.

It starts with an unnamed character being in a dungeon prison with 39 other women. They have been there for almost 15 years. They have fuzzy memories how they ended up there, they have been drugged and she was only a little child while the rest were women.

They are not alone to touch each other. There are guards patrolling outside the bars. They get whipped if they do something wrong. And they have no idea where they are or why.

It is a dystopic nightmare. No one is speaking to them, time has no meaning. One tried to hang herself but was stopped. Someone is always watching. The years tick by.

And then the questions start piling up. Wtf is going on? Why? And things happen that have me questioning more things. This is actually the sort of book that makes me want to analyze it and write about it. I actually think I have to read it again and take notes on everything.

Honestly simply amazing. It might not blow you away at once, but it will reach a point where you just need to know. And then when you do, you realise that this book is fantastic

“Survival is never more than putting off the moment of death.”

“Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence.”

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.