![]() This comparison has been drawn many times by readers however, where Atwood’s story becomes an explicitly gendered dialectic mapped onto the power dynamic between victim and oppressor, Harpman’s prose is far more to do with the singular struggle for survival. The prose and dialogue are sparse and honest in much the same way as Margaret Atwood’s lines in The Handmaid’s Tale. This context of persecution, violence, and suffering forms a consistent backdrop to Harpman’s novel in its themes of arbitrary incarceration and dehumanisation. As Harpman grew up, the horrors of the Holocaust were unfolding all around her. ![]() During this time, Harpman was just ten years old - a similar age to the only child character in the story. Jacqueline Harpman is a Jewish author whose family fled Belgium when the Nazi regime invaded during the Second World War. Harpman’s novel was originally published in 1995 in French as Moi qui n’ai pas connu les hommes, but has since been translated and loved by many more audiences in English since 1997, as an excellent post-apocalyptic work of modern science fiction. The story that unfolds next is one of immense bewilderment, disorientation, and overwhelming loss. None of these women know why they are prisoners, or why there is a child among them. ![]() ![]() Thirty-nine women and one young girl are being held captive in a cage underground, guarded by men who never speak to them. ![]()
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