I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

In a cage underground, 41 women and one child live under the gaze of guards who don’t speak. One day, sirens sound, the guards vanish, and the door opens. What follows is a novel with no real past or future—just the flat, exposed surface of a world emptied out. As they move through this landscape, the women form a fragile kind of community, held together by grief, care, and fleeting intimacies. The girl, now growing into adulthood, teaches herself to feel the passage of time through the rhythm of her pulse, this becoming the only way to mark time aside from sagging skin and death. Harpman’s writing is cold, spare, and precise. We’d love to explore similar stories about movement without destination and the quiet, aching life that persists in its wake.