I Who Have Never Known Men

***THE RUNAWAY BESTSELLER***

"Each revelation is a small miracle."--The New York Times

Deep underground, thirty-nine 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 essential addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.

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Published May 10, 2022

208 pages

Average rating: 7.48

1,566 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

What Bookclubbers are saying about this book

✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI

Readers say *I Who Have Never Known Men* is a haunting, unsettling novel with a stark, dreamlike atmosphere that deeply explores captivity, identity, ...

sweetlemoneade
May 18, 2025
9/10 stars
Amazing. Everyone should read this book, it is so profound and incredible. You’ll feel every emotion reading this book. Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful.
JL Reads
Jan 19, 2026
4/10 stars
Not what I expected. This is a strange, unsettling dystopian story about forty women who have spent years locked in an underground bunker—and then are suddenly free. The narrator, a young girl, has never truly known men; her only exposure is to silent guards who never interact with the women. As a result, her understanding of the world is shaped almost entirely by absence and isolation. It’s labeled sci-fi, but that feels like a stretch—this reads more as an eerie, philosophical meditation on captivity, humanity, and loneliness than a traditional science-fiction novel. 3⭐️ Book #4 in 2026
Casey Broda
Jan 08, 2026
7/10 stars
Completely engrossing story about a girl who grows up in a bunker. She goes through all the emotions of being a teenager realizing what all the women were talking about when they said that she would never know what it was like with a man as there were only women in the bunker.  Through a series of unfortunate and lucky events. The women in the Bunker are released. This allows them and our unnamed protagonist to wander the lands for the rest of their lives. Over the course of the protagonist life, she has to deal with the humanity and inhumanity of growing up in a bunker, not being able to touch people and essentially living on her own while others find companionship in their own ways. This enthralling book will not let you put it down until you finished. Once you have heard all of their stories, then the story will come to an end.
Erica Gina
Dec 22, 2025
3/10 stars
Incredibly distracted by the post tense narration
Elle11
Oct 26, 2025
9/10 stars
Really stuck with me, great piece of feminist science fiction

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