Jacqueline Harpman, a Belgian writer and psychoanalyst who died in 2012, is experiencing a posthumous surge in popularity. Her dystopian novel, "I Who Have Never Known Men," has achieved bestseller status 14 years after her death, largely driven by social media platforms. The book, originally published in French, has sold approximately 600,000 copies since its viral success, according to its U.S. publisher, Transit Books.
Transit publisher Adam Levy discovered "I Who Have Never Known Men" in the backlist of Harpman's French publisher. He described the novel, which centers on 40 women confined to an underground bunker and forbidden from communication or touch, as appealing to Transit's literary audience. Levy suggested the COVID-19 pandemic, with its themes of isolation, may have contributed to the book's resonance with contemporary readers.
Beyond the re-release of "I Who Have Never Known Men," a new collection of Harpman's short stories, "We Were Forbidden," is now available. The collection reportedly includes "The Ardennes Forest," a story described as a companion to her viral novel, as well as an autobiographical piece about a teenager in Morocco during World War II and a tale about an adulteress titled "The Broom Closet."
Transit Books plans to publish three more of Harpman's works over the next three years. During her lifetime, Harpman, who died at 82, was a respected author, though not one who experienced commercial success on the scale she is now seeing. Social media users, like TikTokker Carmin C., have connected the novel's themes to current societal issues, with Carmin noting that the book "mirrors what a lot of women are feeling in the current era."