Quaranta dones estan engabiades i privades d'intimitat en un soterrani, sota la vigilància d'un grup d'homes armats amb fuets. Entre elles hi ha una nena, sense nom, que no te records Les dones tampoc recorden com han arribat allà i tampoc gaire com era la seva vida anterior. Un dia, després del so d'una sirena misteriosa, les dones aconsegueixen sortir a l'exterior, a un món despoblat i desconegut on hauran de reinventar-se i d'enfrontar-se a un nou repte, sobreviure i buscar si hi ha més gent i saber on són ( )

watch here: https://www.youtube.com/@starkissedstories

stunning. bleak yet beautiful. about what it means to be human.
I would have given it more but the mood, and ending of this story is definitely not one I'd call happy - a bit too devastating for me to be a 5 star but so well done. ( )

"I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all…"

Belgian psychoanalyst and author Jacqueline Harpman (1929-2012) wrote over fifteen novels and won several literary prizes. I confess with some shame that I had never heard of her. Perhaps I might be forgiven considering the dearth of English translations of her works. Harpman’s 1995 novel Moi Qui N’ai Pas Connu les Hommes was the first to be translated into English (originally with the title Mistress of Silence) and, although I stand to be corrected, I believe that of her other novels, only the Prix Medicis prize-winner "Orlanda" is also available in English. Mistress of Silence has now been reissued by Vintage Books with the title I Who Have Never Known Men, in the translation by Ros Schwartz, a veteran translator from the French who was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2009.

The novel’s premise is simple: in an undefined period in the near future, we meet forty women who are kept prisoners in a cage in an underground bunker, guarded by a group of armed men, and supplied with just the basic necessities of modern life – electricity, food, water and medication. Eventually, the women manage to escape, only to find themselves roaming what seems to be an uninhabited, post-apocalyptic alien world. The older women hazily but fondly recall a different “normality”, one in which they went around the daily business of life – working, falling in love, raising families. The unnamed narrator is a teenager who has only known life in the bunker. She has no other recollections and is aware that she will never share the experiences which the other women wax nostalgic about. She tries to learn about the past, only to realise that it will serve her no purpose in this strange environment where she will “never know men”.

This new edition of the novel is very clearly meant to capitalise on the current interest in feminist dystopian fiction and it is surely no coincidence that it features a new introduction by Sophie Mackintosh, author of [b:The Water Cure|39335566|The Water Cure|Sophie Mackintosh|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521604165l/39335566._SY75_.jpg|56832986]. Female prisoners guarded by men, escaping to form a utopia in which they manage to survive without the opposite sex… it certainly is a plot which invites a feminist reading. Yet, as Mackintosh perceptively notes, the novel “is not necessarily extolling this kind of existence” and might even be suggesting that “this settling is the downfall of the women”. Perhaps it’s fairer to say that rather than seeking to ponder “what it means to be a woman” or, for that matter, “a man”, Harpman is more interested to explore what it is that makes us “human”. The older women have memories of life on Earth to remind them of their humanity – the narrator is, on the other hand, a blank slate, with no preconceived ‘social constructs’ apart from what she has vaguely gleaned from her fellow prisoners. She has to discover anew the meaning of an existence to which there appears to be no mapped-out purpose.

This novel raises striking philosophical concepts and provides much food for thought. Depending on the reader’s tastes, this could also be its weakness. In fact, this is, in my view, an example of a “novel as thought experiment”. We are given just enough narrative on which to append philosophical discourse. Interesting as that is, anyone looking for page-turning thrills will likely be disappointed. On my part, I felt short-changed by the lack of cogent explanations behind several basic elements of the plot. I like some ambiguity in a plot, but this novel possibly leaves too much to one’s imagination.

Yet, there’s no escaping the effectiveness of the novel’s bleak imagery, and I have this suspicion that it will remain with me for a long time.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2019/04/i-who-have-never-known-men.html ( )

Forty women live in a cage in a bunker, patrolled by guards who only acknowledge the captives to correct their behaviour with whips. The older women have vague memories of a war or a disaster which led to them being drugged and brought underground but the youngest, a girl of thirteen who doesn't even have a name, knows only the cage and the other women. Then one day a siren goes off and the guards flee - leaving the cage open. When the women leave the bunker, they find they are in a cabin in the middle of a dry, featureless landscape that might not even be on Earth. Slowly, they learn to work together, stripping the bunker of food, clothes and food, and head out into the unknown, hoping to find civilisation. They come across further cabins exactly like their own but none of the other captives were able to escape. Life becomes a journey of years, moving from cabin to cabin, until the women establish a village by a river and build houses, while the older women slowly succumb to nature - or the intervention of the narrator and a sharp knife when death is painful or undignified. She begins to realise that soon she will be the only one left - possibly on the whole planet - but she is ready for the challenge.

The main character has no name, and very little in the way of human feelings, and the setting is bleak and unchanging, so of course this was never going to be a cheerful novella. However, I really struggled to get through the story - I wanted answers about the cabins and the siren, not meditations on society and humanity. And I could certainly have done without the bleating about men making the world go around - ‘Men mean you are alive, child. What are we, without a future, without children? The last links in a broken chain' - even if the women prove that sisters are doing it for themselves. The narrator was intriguing and (worryingly) sympathetic to start with - 'Since I barely venture outside these days, I spend a lot of time in one of the armchairs, rereading the books' - but her practical and rather detached personality quickly became rather repellent. And apart from the occasional discovery - the other cabins, a bus, an underground bunker - she and other women just walk and talk. Like a dystopian Tenko.

A dark yet thoughtful story - if you're in the right mood! I don't think I was, sadly. ( )

A mysterious scenario - the reader is immediately immersed in a cell surrounded by guards, with thirty-nine women and a young girl who all have no idea what happened to get them in that cell and the guards are not saying a word. The young girl as the narrator has no memories of her past, unlike the women, so she is at a distance and place of neutrality to both the women and the guards. I will not say more than that of the plot, but it did remain quite the mystery, quite the journey, and quite the heartbreaker. Ultimately, an experiment on humanity, solitude, and hope. I had never heard of this twenty-five year old translated novel, but I'm very glad it was reprinted to be discovered by readers once again. Another to add to the Weird Translated Fiction shelf, but I'm finding that most translated fiction is fairly weird... but wonderfully weird! This one is a great blendered brew of these books: 'Matrix' by Lauren Groff, 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood, 'Women Talking' by Miriam Toews, and maybe a pinch of 'The Hearing Trumpet' by Leonora Carrington. The book also reminded me of the TV show Lost. Harpman had quite the past and I'd be interested to see more of her books translated to English and maybe in the process, her other books might reveal some answers in this one (Harpman's bio says she wrote fifteen novels but I think only two have been published in English.) ( )