“A small miracle . . . I Who Have Never Known Men is about as heavyhearted as fiction can get.”—New York Times
“Mesmerizing. . . . The book’s austere mystery—the atrophied and gelid world it depicts—provides a richly allusive consideration of human life.”—Deborah Eisenberg, New York Review of Books
“A consistently gripping experience.”―TLS
“Like Kafka with a dash of Ursula Le Guin, this story is part mystery, part science fiction, and all literature.”—Booklist
“Immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Evocative and thrilling, it’s a dystopian modern classic.”—Dua Lipa’s Service95 Book Club
“Harpman says here all there is to say about dignity and the difficulty of remaining human in the face of suffering.”—Le Quotidien
“It is surprising that a book with the psychological detail of a nightmare elicits in the reader feelings of such profound intensity.”—Le Monde
“The delirium of I Who Have Never Known Men suggests the work of a feminine Kafka.”—Le Nouvel Observateur
“[A] riveting narrative. . . . Carefully crafted, this novel is both unusual and thought-provoking.”—Library Journal
“Unlike other science fiction or fantasy novels, this is a universe without an invented order: there is no known infrastructure, no reveal, no men hiding behind a curtain. It is the simplicity of the writing that makes my skin crawl, so eerie in its absences.”—Haley Mlotek, Frieze
“[An] eerily evocative novel . . . this intriguingly dark thought experiment told by a compellingly alien voice—dispassionate and unfussy—is strangely fascinating.”—Lucy Scholes, The Times
“A vivid evocation of another world, alive with hope and dignity in the midst of cruelty and alienation. . . . A haunting testimony from an abandoned planet.”—Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From
