Description: Seven Stories Press presents the first English-language edition to showcase one of Europe's newest and most striking womanist voices in fiction
-- Winner of the Prix Point de Mire in France
-- Reminiscent of the best of Octavia E. Butler, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, and Annie Ernaux

In this widely acclaimed novel, award-winning author Jacqueline Harpman creates a haunting and unforgettable story that is part thriller, part mystery, a work of both fantasy and literature. Set in the future, on a barren earth where women are kept in underground cages guarded by silent, uniformed groups of men, it is narrated by the youngest of the women -- the only one with no memory of what earth was like before, a woman with a spirit unlearned, but still intact.

Imprisoned as a child among 40 grown women after a mysterious planetary disaster, this nameless young woman has grown up even more isolated by her strangeness, especially hurt by a rule that forbids even the slightest touching. She and the others have been forced to adapt to the strange rhythm of artificial days and nights, gradually losing their memories of their past. Yet somehow her peculiarities will become their salvation.

Unclouded by memory, she learns to see clearly, to teach herself, without books or sexual contact, the essential human emotions of longing, loving, learning, companionship, and dying -- lessons that in turn strengthen her companions and teach readers themselves much about what it means to be human.

"Harpman says here all there is to say about dignity and the difficulty of remaining human in the face of suffering". -- Le Quotidien

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