finished reading

This book is post-apocalyptic, dystopian, existentialist at its finest.  As I read, I kept thinking about what if the world were stripped of the cultural touchstones?  How would we define ourselves, our relationships, and our community?

The book has three sections, beginning in the cage, where the young narrator is surrounded by thirty-nine other nameless women of various ages (at least a decade older than her), and develops a sense of self-awareness.  She has no memories pre-cage, no explanation for why they are held in the cage, where they came from, or who the male guards are.  The next section is the escape from the cage: the women are stepping into the barren outside world and naturally form bonds and groups within the larger group. They form a functioning community. Eventually, in the third section, the narrator has outlived the other women and faces her own mortality. 

The author doesn't provide answers to the "why" of the apocalypse; instead, she forces us to look at the "who"-who are we when there is no one left to tell us who we should be?

The translation by Ros Schwarz is beautifully narrated by Nikki Massoud.

From the publisher:

Deep underground, forty 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 a 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.

Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.