I who have not known men: the surprise return of a forgotten feminist novel

Posted in 1995, the feminist dystopian novel I who have not known menfrom the Belgian Jacqueline Harpman, has an unexpected rebirth thanks to social networks. Faced with the craze, the French publisher Stock has just republished this disturbing fiction, which is also the subject of a revival of popularity in Quebec.

After British and American publishing houses, it is the turn of a French -speaking house to publish a new edition of this novel, in which the narrator lives, without past or understandable future, in a strangely stripped world, first oppressive and then confusing.

The French reissue wins a preface to a 31 -year -old novelist, Julia Malye. She notes there that Jacqueline Harpman wrote the frame of this text in one nightand that he can be seen as even more than feminist […]humanist.

Resurrected thanks to social networks

Translated in 1997 under the title The Mistress of Silence, I who have not known men has become viral in English -speaking countries, thanks to Tiktok, Instagram and others.

The Cutonline supplement of New York Magazinecompared it to a monument of the genre: The scarlet servant (The Handmaid’s Tale), The Margaret Atwood.

To believe The Cuthis rediscovery by the general public started from the intuition, in 2018, of a editor of Vintage UK which leaf through this forgotten book.

While feminism faces virulent criticism from conservative circles and The scarlet servant knows a revival of popularity, this British publishing house had a revised translation reappeared in 2019, under a title more respectful of that chosen by Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men.

After confinement [du printemps 2020]it has become a best-sellerexplains Raphaëlle Liebaert, editor for stock.

Indeed, this account concerns 40 women who are, at the beginning of the novel, trapped together without having the right to touch each other, inevitably evoking the barriers and the social distancing.

In 2022, an American publisher, Transit Booksin turn made the bet to reissue the book, which has passed 100,000 copies last year in the United States.

This is one of the wonderful things in publishing: you can never knowsaid Ros Schwartz, who translated the novel into English, Guardian in February. I guess it affects a sensitive string in the young generation, which it had not done at the time.

We are 30 international transfers. It is not often that a book in French is as much translatednotes Raphaëlle Liebaert.

A book that sells on its own

In Quebec too, I who have not known men arouses new interest. I just put the book to the sight of people, and he sells himself, observes Marilou Lebel-Dupuis of the Montreal feminist bookstore the Euguélionne. I don’t need to advise him.

It’s been about a year and a half that the novel is claimed, especially in the English -speaking version, by its predominantly female customers. Many people did not know that the French version was the original versionshe said.

The Euguélionne took several months to succeed in getting their hands on French copies. The French version was still exhaustedexplains the bookseller.

Imagine a world without men

Jacqueline Harpman was 66 years old when she published I who have not known menhis ninth novel. She then enjoyed a solid reputation in the world of letters.

This Brussels psychoanalyst ended up in the final of the French literary prize Femina, as she had already done four years earlier with Ostend beach. She lost, but won the Medici Prize in 1996, with Orlando.

After his death in 2012, his work interested researchers. It is a part, for example, alongside the French women Nina Bouraoui or Marguerite Yourcenar, of the eight authors studied in a doctoral thesis on The construction of female identities in literature since 1950.

The identity in general, feminine in particular, is indeed a theme which crosses the work of this novelist, in whom the classic style, very mastered, contrasts with the deep and disturbing questions posed by her intrigue. Here, in this case: for what to live when it is forbidden to cultivate the link with others? And what becomes of a private company of men?

This non-mixedness, which is suffered and not chosen in I who have not known menis one of the reasons for the current popularity of the novel, according to Marilou Lebel-Duis. It is radical to imagine communities of women, without menshe explains, adding that this can particularly speak to the Americans who experience a feeling of injustice in the face of their president Donald Trump, accused of sexual assault on numerous occasions.

Non-mixedness, which is imposed by men in the book, is ultimately recovered by women to their advantage and becomes a source of creativity as well as well-beingshe also advances as an explanation.

With agency information France-Presse