I Who Have Never Known Men

I finished another book today. This one was called I Who Have Never Known Men, by a Belgian author by the name Jaqueline Harpman. It was written in 1995 and in my opinion is an instant classic.

I came across this one on social media and it sounded appealing to me so I decided to give it a go. Its a short novella of only around 190 pages or so (depending on the print version) and it can easily be read in a week if you're an average to moderately fast reader. An ambitious or quick reader could probably easily complete this in a day or over a weekend. I'm average at best so it took me just under a week.

There is something to be said about a story that is told in exactly how many words that are needed to tell it, without any filler or word count quotas. Its like every word has a purpose. I like that.

Brief Synopsis

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The book is set in a dystopian world where a group of 40 women are being held captive by male guards. The guards never make physical contact with the women or even speak to them. The only communication that they make is the cracking of their whips whenever a woman breaks any of the unnamed rules of life in the bunker. Don't touch each other. Don't try and kill yourself.

The story is told by the narrator, a young women (perhaps in her early teens) who is the only one to have fully grown up in the bunker and who never knew the outside world. Her perspective on life is much different than the others and we get to experience how she perceives the world and each experiencethat she encounters.

The story is reminiscent of Platos Allegory of the Cave, in which prisoners are chained inside a cave and believe reality reality to be the shadows cast on the walls by a fire set behind them.

One day for some unknown reason, the guards flee the bunker and the women are freed to leave. What follows is their journey to the outside world and navigating the strange unknown. Everything is so much different than inside the bunker.

There is mystery to the story but I would say that its not central to the plot. To be completely honest, part way through I started to think that the mystery would never be explained. In actuality I didn't really care if it was or if it wasn't. I got a sense that the mystery of the world was unimportant. Overall what actually mattered was the experience of the narrator. I won't say one way or another if the mystery is explained in the end. You will have to find that out for yourself if you do decide to read the book.

Conclusion

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The book to me was very emotional and very touching. It was sad at times, and elegantly written throughout. I found it captivating overall.

It reminded me a lot of another book that I read recently called A Short Stay in Hell. Though the two books were very different in plot and in style, they touched on many similar themes: existentialism, repetitiveness, isolation and human connection.

This is a story of what it means to be human.

I Who Have Never Known Men is my best book of 2026 so far. It was a beautiful read. 5 stars from me.

what do you think? Have you read this book? Would you read it? Let me know in the comments.