We Were Forbidden

Synopsis

In this remarkable collection of three novellas, Jacqueline Harpman explores the many forms of resistance through women confronting lives shaped by violence, repression, and expectation. In a post-apocalyptic landscape, a woman joins a group of survivors condemned to wander endlessly through a mysterious forest. In 1940s Casablanca, a Jewish schoolgirl discovers the devastating cost of questioning authority. And in postwar Belgium, a young wife trapped in a loveless marriage begins to awaken to desires and possibilities long denied to her.

Elegant, psychologically incisive, and quietly subversive, We Were Forbidden reveals the extraordinary range of one of Belgium's finest writers. Bound together by themes of freedom, identity, and defiance, these newly translated novellas illuminate the early development of the singular voice that would later produce I Who Have Never Known Men.

About the Author

Jacqueline Harpman (1929–2012) was a Belgian novelist and psychoanalyst whose fiction explores memory, identity, desire, and survival. Forced to flee Belgium during the Second World War, her experiences of exile profoundly shaped her work. Long celebrated in the French-speaking world, Harpman has found a new international readership through the rediscovery of her fiction in English translation. This edition is translated from the French by Ros Schwartz.

Publisher
Transit Books

Publication Date
July 7, 2026

Format
Paperback

Pages
112

Subjects
Literary Fiction · Translated Fiction · Belgian Literature · Feminist Fiction · Novellas

ISBN
9798893380583