I Who Have Never Known Men — Jacqueline Harpman

I Who Have Never Known Men is the first of Jacqueline Harpman's 10 novels to be translated from French. It is a chilling, surreal, speculative fiction as well as a novel of ideas. The story takes place after some unspecified great disaster--pandemic? global warming? nuclear holocaust?--and concerns a group of 40 women kept alive in an underground bunker. The women are watched over by mute, whip-toting male guards. The youngest woman in the group has no memory of life above ground and her elders conceal as much as they reveal about their predisaster lives. I Who Have Never Known Men examines the roles of context and history in making us who we are.