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.