"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 important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature"--

The groundbreaking novel about a woman whose subconscious mind splinters and finds itself in the body of a young man, from the author of I Who Have Never Known Men . Now in paperback with a new foreword by Isle McElroy for the 30th anniversary of its original publication. One afternoon in a café across the Gare du Nord train station in Paris, Aline Berger, a literature professor, struggles to re-read Virginia Woolf’s Orlando , when an odd feeling comes over her. Suddenly, part of her consciousness splits off and finds itself in the body of an attractive young man named Lucien Lèfrene, who works as a rock journalist. In this newfound body, Aline’s splintered mind names themselves Orlanda in homage to Virginia Woolf as a woman who has now become a man. Orlanda begins to follow Aline. And when the two meet again in Belgium, Aline subconsciously sheds her prim tendencies for a more assertive presence, as she begins to understand that Orlanda was born from her own psyche. Orlanda is the assertive, confident, and amorous person, who loves men unabashedly, that Aline has always aspired to be but could never become. The more time the two spend together, the less time they can stand to be apart. This lyrical novel is a stunning portrait of a woman who is forced to confront every part of her soul and embrace herself fully.