"I Who Have Never Known Men" by Jacqueline Harpman is a deeply sad and emotional novel. 

At its heart, the book explores the absurdity of life and the cruel irony of fate. (existential absurdism, the clash between humanity’s deep need for meaning and the universe’s (or the system’s) complete indifference and silence)

The story begins inside a windowless cabin where forty women are imprisoned. They have no sense of time, follow the same unchanging routine every day, and eat the same food. Most of them have faded memories and can not recall their lives before captivity. Among them is a young girl, the only child in the group. No one, not even the women themselves, knows why they are there or what the purpose of their imprisonment is.

The girl feels angry and resentful toward the women, believing they are hiding secrets from her. To escape the boredom and powerlessness, she creates her own secret inner world. Ironically, once the women notice she has something private, they become desperate to know her secret. Even in captivity, some still crave power and control, and keeping secrets becomes one way to feel it.

The girl has never known the outside world. She has no experience of love, sex, family, or freedom. It is strongly suggested that she is barren. Her entire life exists within the four walls of the cabin.

One day, a siren sounds, the guards suddenly abandon their posts, and the women manage to escape into the open world. However, freedom turns out to be just as disappointing and suffocating as the cabin. The land is vast, empty, and monotonous. The women try to recreate a sense of normal life by singing and sharing memories of the past, but they soon realize they have no real control. Their lives feel as bare and meaningless as the empty landscape around them.

The young girl becomes the most curious one. She reads whatever she can find and explores eagerly, hoping to discover other people; trying to create out of nothingness.

 One by one, the women die until they are left completely alone. In the end, she too falls ill and dies, alone, surrounded only by corpses. She realizes she has spent her whole life searching for connection, yet she found only death and emptiness.The book suggests that the search for meaning itself is both what makes us human and what condemns us to suffering in an indifferent world...the world does not care;  naturally things will continue happening with or without us.

The deepest irony comes at her death: she dies of cancer of the uterus, the very organ that never worked, the part of her body that made her barren and “useless” in the eyes of the old world. The thing she thought had no value became the cause of her death.

Harpman uses an all-female cast to highlight the absence of men. The women constantly speak of their past lives, where sex, love, and companionship revolved around men. Even when they try to form relationships among themselves, it never fully satisfies their longing. The novel quietly shows how central men once were to their sense of meaning and womanhood. However, she brings to the foreground the fluidity of womanhood. The women are forced to take up, manly, roles in the new world, and this, imo, doesn't echo feminism per se but rather, what happens when the old definition of womanhood is stripped? Does it expand to something universal? Is womanhood just tied to gender and societal roles? Who defines it? 

The indifferent rivers flowing through the barren land also play a symbolic role. They represent both hope and absurdity -- the women keep hoping the river will lead them somewhere better, even as death claims them one by one. The river flows on, uncaring.

Ultimately, the book reveals how powerful hope is. Without it, humans struggle to survive. It also shows our deep need for companionship and meaning. Even in the face of absurdity and inevitable death, the search for connection and understanding continues.

I who Have Never Known men