I Who Have Never Known Men

A brilliant dystopian novel aboot a girl and 39 women in a bunker. They escape and start questioning, "are we still on earth?". A book about loneliness, solidarity, intellectual growth, sexuality and feminism. What does it mean to live? To feel, to know, to understand? This is a 10/10 must read!

It's been weeks now since I first read this book, and I still catch myself thinking about this story on a regular basis. Thirty-nine women and a child in a bunker. Our protagonist, the child, is the only woman/girl among them who doesn't have any memories of the normal outside world. One day, an alarm goes off and the key remains in the lock. The women get out and begin discovering the world outside, building a community along the way. This novel was out of this world: so unique, so philosophical. It's a dystopian sci-fi, but not in the regular way. It doesn't answer any questions about how or why they got there, or even where they are. Instead, it focuses on the inner world of the child and her adolescence in a world where nothing has remained. It's not a feminist novel in the typical sense. Instead, it is a pledge to girl- and womanhood and what it ultimately means. It's a homage to hope and resilience in times when you physically and mentally shouldn't be able to be hopeful. It's out of this world and yet so deeply human. The journey the girl goes through, and her inner monologue, are so incredibly human, even though she knows nothing about the "normal" world. She can't miss something that she never knew. A modern classic that totally deserves to be rediscovered, and I highly recommend it, even though it can be on the harder side, topic-wise.

Child is the only woman without memory of the life and the world before the cage. They call her child because she has no name and was a child when the fourty of them found themselves locked up, guarded by three men without ever getting an explanation. This dystopic story keeps one thinking long after the last sentence is read, asking questions about freedom and captivity, about being human and cruelty, about what it means to not know.

This book holds so much. You’ve got a dystopian world with a protagonist who grew up with men only being wardens and nothing else in her point of view. Among women who knew men before the world turned upside down. This feminist fiction is a modern classic which gives the right questions throughout an agitative plot seen through eyes who have seen too little of a weird, broken world to understand the way others feel. A big surprise and highlight for me which kept me thinking about it for a while and still brings me back to it every now and then. Great writing.

Not a day goes by, when I don't think about this book. There's not a lot I can say about it, without spoiling it. It's a quick read. It's a modern classic. It doesn't pass the reverse-Bechdel-test. Need I say more?