Book Club: I Who Have Never Known Men

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman is a dystopian sci-fi novel. It was originally written in French and published in 1995. It was not very well known until recently it surged in popularity.

This renewed interest in the book is not unfounded. Although it is only thirty years old, I was convinced it was at least twenty years older. It reads much like the foundational dystopian sci-fi novels like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, or Brave New World.

It tells the story of a woman who has lived her entire life in a prison. She has no memory of anything else. In the prison cell are only women. The other women do remember life before the prison, but nothing else. They don’t know why they are there, and assume they will never be let out. From that point, various events begin to unfold.