[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":205},["ShallowReactive",2],{"$f3kt5p3rwpoj6y":3,"$fihe75w7kzl6o":42},{"navigation":4,"tagline":41},[5,9,13,17,21,25,29,33,37],{"accentColor":6,"slug":7,"title":8},"#0C2478","world-news-and-current-affairs","World News & Current Affairs",{"accentColor":10,"slug":11,"title":12},"#A40C2C","social-commentary-and-opinion","Social Commentary & Opinion",{"accentColor":14,"slug":15,"title":16},"#A44800","arts-and-culture","Arts & Culture",{"accentColor":18,"slug":19,"title":20},"#877A00","science-and-technology","Science & Technology",{"accentColor":22,"slug":23,"title":24},"#2F7D32","school-life","School Life",{"accentColor":26,"slug":27,"title":28},"#8248C4","interviews","Interviews",{"accentColor":30,"slug":31,"title":32},"#00766C","wellness-and-self-care","Wellness & Self-Care",{"accentColor":34,"slug":35,"title":36},"#1669A6","academic-resources","Academic Resources",{"accentColor":38,"slug":39,"title":40},"#A3306F","creative-writing","Creative Writing","Words have the power to change the world, so we’ve been choosing them carefully for 19 years.",{"_id":43,"authors":44,"body":51,"bylineOverride":47,"dek":87,"heroImage":47,"moreFromSection":160,"printEdition":196,"publishedAt":200,"section":201,"seoDescription":47,"seoTitle":47,"slug":202,"tags":47,"title":203,"wordCount":204},"article-i-who-have-never-known-men-the-book-with-no-answers",[45],{"_id":46,"bio":47,"name":48,"photo":47,"role":49,"slug":50},"author-julie-hoffmanova",null,"Julie Hoffmanová","Editor-in-Chief and Design Editor","julie-hoffmanova",[52,72,81,89,105,109,117,125,133,148],{"_key":53,"_type":54,"children":55,"markDefs":70,"style":71},"cfb6539cba59","block",[56,61,66],{"_key":57,"_type":58,"marks":59,"text":60},"992014e39a6c","span",[],"Humanity is an elastic word. We could define it in countless ways in terms of moral quality, our biological condition or social constructs. In ",{"_key":62,"_type":58,"marks":63,"text":65},"5e1943c8d4d3",[64],"em","I Who Have Never Known Men",{"_key":67,"_type":58,"marks":68,"text":69},"d346b1da7bcd",[]," from 1995, Jacqueline Harpman refuses to even try to provide a clear definition of humanity. Instead, she places it under extreme conditions and examines its development. Through this post-apocalyptic dystopian novel, she poses the question: What remains of humanity, when all its social context is stripped away? To answer this question, everything in the novel is filtered through the mind of a single narrator.",[],"normal",{"_key":73,"_type":74,"alt":75,"asset":76,"caption":79,"credit":80},"ce54f0f4f440","inlineImage","Book cover of I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman: a woman's face in green beside a pale orange circle.",{"_ref":77,"_type":78},"image-4bcdf8c18aa64190d3e2b51140de11ed2d8f54b9-762x1071-jpg","reference","Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage.","cover design by Anna Morrison, Knihy Dobrovský",{"_key":82,"_type":54,"children":83,"markDefs":88,"style":71},"a01c270708a4",[84],{"_key":85,"_type":58,"marks":86,"text":87},"76ccfc98279c",[64],"“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”",[],{"_key":90,"_type":54,"children":91,"markDefs":104,"style":71},"797fef24ac22",[92,96,100],{"_key":93,"_type":58,"marks":94,"text":95},"72a32757b492",[],"This young woman finds herself lost, without an accessible past, yet in a world that is dependent on it. She was born as the ",{"_key":97,"_type":58,"marks":98,"text":99},"a76b3411baad",[64],"“sterile offspring”",{"_key":101,"_type":58,"marks":102,"text":103},"4ef23cc1e404",[],", abandoned by the people who created the circumstances of her suffering. As she comes of age, she turns to her inner self, because that is the only place she can find clarity in her situation.",[],{"_key":106,"_type":107,"text":108},"0cc563dd39f1","pullQuote","“...you shouldn’t look for the meaning of a book anywhere but within the book itself, not in the author’s life or in the writings of critics and other commentators.\"",{"_key":110,"_type":54,"children":111,"markDefs":116,"style":71},"617ca0687cf6",[112],{"_key":113,"_type":58,"marks":114,"text":115},"75c0f381b21e",[],"She grows up without the reference to human touch, culture, dignity, men or desire. Her interpretations, judgments, and secrets form independently of society’s oversight. She is the only empty page left in a book from which all others have been torn. So what is left of her humanity when all that once defined it has slipped beyond time? As she observes, “Perhaps you never have time when you are alone? You only acquire it by watching it go by in others.”",[],{"_key":118,"_type":54,"children":119,"markDefs":124,"style":71},"2ab86d76cb8c",[120],{"_key":121,"_type":58,"marks":122,"text":123},"b71a755e7d40",[],"The novel exists in a space that is timeless, beyond time, in the absence of time altogether. There is no indication of this human-made concept within the novel, no calendars, history or progress. Nothing that could satisfy the reader’s conventional desire to find an answer to all the questions. The protagonist could be thousands of years from the future, or she could as well be wandering across the endless plains of a deserted planet right at this moment. The time within this book is relative only to her heartbeat and the slight changes of her surroundings, no more no less. The distance the absence of time creates is balanced by the excruciating realism. Despite the disorientation, the emotional effect of the intimacy of the text is what connects us with the story. Timelessness does not act as a barrier on the protagonist’s journey; it starts to mirror her endurance as she is able to find rhythm within her own mind.",[],{"_key":126,"_type":54,"children":127,"markDefs":132,"style":71},"cc0ddb41025e",[128],{"_key":129,"_type":58,"marks":130,"text":131},"0b93bc02161e",[],"Jacqueline Harpman was born in Belgium in 1929. After the start of World War II, she moved to Casablanca with her close family to avoid prosecution by the Nazis. While most of her paternal family was being killed in Auschwitz, Harpman faced oppression due to her Jewish origins in Morocco. She returned home after the war and after studying French literature and abandoning her medical studies, she turned to writing in 1954.",[],{"_key":134,"_type":54,"children":135,"markDefs":147,"style":71},"cca889192ca6",[136,140,143],{"_key":137,"_type":58,"marks":138,"text":139},"009e749757a7",[],"It is tempting to read ",{"_key":141,"_type":58,"marks":142,"text":65},"788f0870ffb7",[64],{"_key":144,"_type":58,"marks":145,"text":146},"b70edb0b24da",[]," through the lens of the twentieth-century atrocities, given the novel’s themes of dehumanization, confinement and injustice. Yet Harpman herself proposes the contrary. In her later novel Orlanda, the character Aline, a professor of literature, suggests that “you shouldn’t look for the meaning of a book anywhere but within the book itself, not in the author’s life or in the writings of critics and other commentators.\" While the biography inevitably shapes the perspective of the author, reducing the novel to a historical allegory risks oversimplifying both the text and the real-world events it might evoke.",[],{"_key":149,"_type":54,"children":150,"markDefs":159,"style":71},"df0cbef2f685",[151,155],{"_key":152,"_type":58,"marks":153,"text":154},"8e380224a041",[],"Praised and criticized for its ambiguity and the lack of resolution, I Who Have Never Known Men strips humanity of its history, time and commentary. It is left abandoned in the desert, not to carry purpose, progress, or even hope, but to endure in silence and solitude, waiting, only to witness ",{"_key":156,"_type":58,"marks":157,"text":158},"57d8825d27c7",[64],"“an old woman sitting upright, a knife in her heart, looking peaceful.”",[],[161,186],{"_id":162,"authors":163,"bylineOverride":47,"dek":47,"heroImage":167,"publishedAt":182,"section":183,"slug":184,"title":185},"article-how-victoria-s-secret-reinvented-itself-after-its-comeback",[164],{"name":165,"slug":166},"Sofie Karafiátová","sofie-karafiatova",{"alt":168,"asset":169,"caption":171,"credit":172,"crop":173,"hotspot":176},"Gigi Hadid on a bright pink runway wearing large pink feathered wings, under the words “We are back”.",{"_ref":170,"_type":78},"image-4c5fd66c13e5e08b87fdfe0182d2cf892bcb7557-531x338-jpg","Jelena Noura “Gigi” Hadid at the 2025 Victoria's Secret fashion show.","Taylor Hill\u002FWireImage",{"_type":174,"bottom":175,"left":175,"right":175,"top":175},"sanity.imageCrop",0,{"_type":177,"height":178,"width":179,"x":180,"y":181},"sanity.imageHotspot",0.9,0.4,0.72,0.5,"2026-03-01T07:52:00Z",{"accentColor":14,"slug":15,"title":16},"how-victoria-s-secret-reinvented-itself-after-its-comeback","How Victoria’s Secret Reinvented Itself After Its Comeback",{"_id":187,"authors":188,"bylineOverride":47,"dek":47,"heroImage":47,"publishedAt":192,"section":193,"slug":194,"title":195},"article-how-is-ai-affecting-the-music-industry",[189],{"name":190,"slug":191},"Danny Smíšek","danny-smisek","2026-03-01T07:51:00Z",{"accentColor":14,"slug":15,"title":16},"how-is-ai-affecting-the-music-industry","How Is AI Affecting the Music Industry?",{"_id":197,"editionNumber":198,"publishDate":199},"printEdition-2025-26-2",2,"2026-03-01","2026-03-01T06:51:00Z",{"accentColor":14,"slug":15,"title":16},"i-who-have-never-known-men-the-book-with-no-answers","I Who Have Never Known Men: The Book With No Answers",657,1790340042845]