Book of the Month: August 2025

I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

About I Who Have Never Known Men

Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic tale of female friendship and intimacy set in a deserted world. Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus? Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an 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. The woman who will never know men.

Praise for "I Who Have Never Known Men"

A vivid evocation of another world, alive with hope and dignity

A novel that takes you into philosophically interesting territory… this [is a] intriguingly dark thought experiment told by a compellingly alien voice – dispassionate and unfussy – is strangely fascinating ― The Times

A bleak but fascinating postapocalyptic novel… all the loneliness and oblivion of a deserted world won't stop us from following the narrator as far as she can go

A haunting post-apocalyptic tale' Guardian

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