PENGUIN-CLASSICS-Best-sci-fi-classics_1262x752_Penguin

Reading lists

Must-read sci-fi classics

vintage-article-promo-safe-area-tht.jpg

What to read after The Handmaid’s Tale

Orlanda

Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium in 1929. Being half Jewish, the family fled to Casablanca when the Nazis invaded, and only returned home after the war. After studying French literature she started training to be a doctor, but could not complete her training due to contracting tuberculosis. She turned to writing in 1954 and her first work was published in 1958. In 1980 she qualified as a psychoanalyst. Harpman wrote over 15 novels and won numerous literary prizes, including the Prix Médicis for Orlanda. I Who Have Never Known Men was her first novel to be translated into English, and was originally published with the title The Mistress of Silence

"A magical novel on the theme of androgyny. Funny, subtle, poignant..." - Nadine Sautel, Magazine littéraire 
 
"Jacqueline Harpman drags us into one of those sexual phantasmagorias that are her own secret. She displays incredible confidence in juggling identities and meshing together yearnings and phobias, fantasies and frustrations" - T G, L'Express 
 
How would it be to jump into the skin of another? To be both a man and a woman at once? And what would happen if you found yourself attracted to yourself? 
 
Beneath a mousy exterior, 35-year-old college lecturer Aline seethes with frustration. Sick of being bullied by her mother and treated like a piece of furniture by Albert, her live-in lover, one day Aline leaps from her own skin into the far more attractive body of Lucien, whom she spots in a café at the Gare du Nord. From here this brilliantly imaginative story runs on parallel lines. While Aline sensibly catches the train back to her orderly life, Aline-Lucien - or Orlanda, as her bold new composite self is called in homage to Virginia Woolf - follows, dragging chaos in his wake. 
 
Jacqueline Harpman, herself once a psychoanalyst, revels in the confusion, as ego falls for alter ego and mothers, sisters and lovers begin to ask awkward questions in this unusual perceptive comedy of double selves and bisexuality. 
 
"Undoubtedly this is a novel to breathe life into characters through the unfettered use of the imagination. It offers a pretext for a great deal of humour and fantasy that stirs up the old myths' - André Brincourt, Figaro 
 
Winner of the Prix Médicis.

Jacqueline Harpman

Ros Schwartz

A novel that takes you into philosophically interesting territory&hellip; this [is a] intriguingly dark thought experiment told by a compellingly alien voice &ndash; dispassionate and unfussy &ndash; is strangely fascinating

A vivid evocation of another world, alive with hope and dignity

Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From

Perfect for those dark winter nights, discover the haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic tale of female friendship and intimacy set in a deserted world. 
 
Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, these women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollections of their lives before. As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl – the fortieth prisoner – sits alone and outcast in the corner. But soon she will show herself to be the key to the others’ escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above. 
 
‘A haunting post-apocalyptic tale’ Guardian 
 
'An intriguingly dark thought experiment told by a compellingly alien voice...strangely fascinating' The Times 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH

Jacqueline Harpman

Praise for I Who Have Never Known Men

A novel that takes you into philosophically interesting territory… this [is a] intriguingly dark thought experiment told by a compellingly alien voice – dispassionate and unfussy – is strangely fa ...

A vivid evocation of another world, alive with hope and dignity

Books by Jacqueline Harpman

Articles featuring Jacqueline Harpman

Must-read sci-fi classics

What to read after The Handmaid’s Tale

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter