We Were Forbidden

"For readers who first met Harpman via her melancholic digital afterlife, We Were Forbidden will arrive as a revelation."—Katy Waldman, The New Yorker

From the bestselling author of I Who Have Never Known Men comes a startling trio of novellas—translated into English for the first time—each plumbing the depths of that vital human instinct: defiance.

In the wake of some unfathomable war, a woman wanders the forest. She and her fellow survivors are forbidden from leaving its boundaries or pausing in their eternal march through its strange depths.

Attending a rigid French school in 1940s Casablanca, a teenage girl is barred from ever questioning the dogma she is taught to believe—her punishment for doing so will be as swift as it is shocking.

Locked in a loveless marriage in the Belgian bourgeoisie, a young woman satisfies her husband's desires, twice weekly, as required. She has not yet thought to pursue her own.

These novellas—the first works by Jacqueline Harpman to arrive in English in decades—reveal her incredible stylistic range and demonstrate once more her penetrating psychological insight. Here we find the origins of a singular, relentless voice.