Female Power Versus Toxic Masculinity

IN 2022, A DECADE after her death, Jacqueline Harpman, the Belgian psychoanalyst and novelist, went viral on TikTok. Harpman’s 1995 speculative fiction novel I Who Have Never Known Men describes the liberation of a group of women from male captivity. That uncanny, dreamlike novel first appeared in English in 1997 in Ros Schwartz’s fine translation. In 2024, the novel found new resonance in an era of toxic masculinity unleashed by Donald Trump’s first term in office, and sold 100,000 copies in the United States. Now, as toxic masculinity becomes the modus operandi of Trump 2.0, comes We Were Forbidden, a slim volume of three novellas (also translated by Schwartz) in which Harpman showcases her remarkable storytelling skills, with female characters who derive their power from rational inquiry and artistic imagination while fighting narrow-minded bullies.