Moi qui n'ai pas connu les hommes

The narrator is the youngest of forty women held in a cage underneath the earth, observed through glass by a guard whom nobody can speak to. She has never known a man and has no memory of anything before. Time passes, women die of age and illness, and at last the guards disappear and the survivors escape into an empty world. Jacqueline Harpman, a Belgian novelist and psychoanalyst, writes in a plain, reflective voice, looking at friendship, solitude, and the desire to understand.

It suits readers who like speculative fiction that raises large questions without large action. You get a short, unsettling novel that lingers on what remains when everything social is removed.

Deep, inward-looking, contemplative, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

Best for readers like The Wisdom Collector. Which reader are you?