We Were Forbidden

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.

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

"Dystopian literary surrealism from a master who's belatedly getting her due." —The New York Times Book Review

"For readers who first met Harpman via her melancholic digital afterlife, We Were Forbidden will arrive as a revelation... Her books attest to the potential for solitary selves to meet, merge, and multiply, producing something more beautiful and enduring than they can alone." —Katy Waldman, The New Yorker

"Across these works, Harpman traces variations of the same psychic drama. Her dystopias diagnose the mind under pressure... Having lived through displacement, illness, and the violence of institutions, Harpman understands how quickly prohibitions take root. The world may collapse, but the mind continues to enforce its codes." —Petya K. Grady, The Believer

"In Harpman's desperate, ornery, and alien universes, her avatars write their memoirs for no one at all. It is a desolate prospect, but also a triumph." —Jessi Jezewska Stevens, 4Columns

"Harpman's characters think with the reader as their fates take shape; nothing is defined; everything is in the act of becoming... She leaves the scaffolding with the building, and there is great joy in watching the workings of a novelist's mind in these pages." —Kaya Genç, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Reading [Harpman's] prose, one is reminded of Robert Coover or Donald Barthelme, those other masters of the seriously weird and yet wonderfully fun, transgressive, idea-driven tale . . . Like going to the church we always wished we'd had." —Liz Wood, Words Without Borders

"With this collection, readers are afforded intimacy with Harpman the woman, who felt and thought more than what can be gleaned from the postapocalyptic tragedy that has made her a sensation." —Emily Wood, The Toronto Review

"Another stunning missive from Harpman's repertoire... Renewed interest in Harpman's oeuvre isn't just warranted: In works like this, she reveals herself to be one of the major writers of the 20th century, comparable to Gogol and Kafka but with a style and outlook entirely her own." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"The three female protagonists in this sharp-edged triptych push back against the political, educational, and sexual regimes, respectively, that govern their lives... wry and metafictional; this is transfixing." —Publishers Weekly

"Enigmatic and cartwheeling. Harpman's splendid novellas explore refusal in its collective and personal forms--a piercing commentary on human compulsions to duty.” —Foreword Reviews, starred review

"These tales showcase a new side of Harpman's prose... Full of nuance and spite, and true to Harpman's beloved style." —Booklist

"Post-apocalyptic science fiction, like John Wyndham; humorous and incisive, like Don Quixote." —Library Journal