What a strange, enthralling, compassionate, haunting question of a book is I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN (Penguin Random House 1995) by Jacqueline Harpman. This slim feminist dystopian volume has a simple yet indecipherable plot and is an absolute delight to read. Although now 30 years old, it could easily have been published yesterday, as the themes and provocations are still relevant today.
Deep in an underground bunker, 39 women are kept in a cage, watched over by six male guards who never speak. The women must follow strict rules and are given basic provisions. They have no collective or individual memory of how they arrived there or where they’ve come from. There is no overt violence – any hint of terror is off the page. The story is narrated by the youngest woman, a girl at the time of imprisonment, too young then to recall anything of her former life. Over the years, the older women teach her what they can, but with no points of reference – no windows, no seasons, no sense of time, no animals – their teachings are limited. Electricity is plentiful but the lights go on and off in random cycles.
The young girl – nobody even knows her name – watches intently as she counts her heartbeats and tries to understand something, anything at all, about their environment and the reason they are kept imprisoned.
But one day something extraordinary happens and the women are freed, only to discover a strange world empty of people. Some wonder if they are even on earth or have been transported to another planet. The young girl becomes the leader as the women desperately and then with resignation trudge through year after year of replicated similarity.
The author raises questions about autonomy, social cohesion and teamwork, and also about our reaction to our dead.
This is such a strange and unearthly novel, beautifully written and evocative. The narrator’s thoughts are moving and ask the reader to question the very meaning of existence. Despite deprivation, a lack of comprehension and a dearth of company, the book holds a message of great hope, respect and dignity.