From the best­selling author of I Who Have Nev­er Known Men comes a star­tling trio of novel­las – trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish for the first time – each plumb­ing the depths of that vital human instinct: defiance.

In the wake of some unfath­omable war, a woman wan­ders the for­est. She and her fel­low sur­vivors are for­bid­den from leav­ing its bound­aries or paus­ing in their eter­nal march through its strange depths.

Attend­ing a rigid French school in 1940s Casablan­ca, a teenage girl is barred from ever ques­tion­ing the dog­ma she is taught to believe – her pun­ish­ment for doing so will be as swift as it is shocking.

Locked in a love­less mar­riage in the Bel­gian bour­geoisie, a young woman sat­is­fies her hus­band’s desires, twice week­ly, as required. She has not yet thought to pur­sue her own.

These novel­las – the first works by Jacque­line Harp­man to arrive in Eng­lish in decades – reveal her incred­i­ble styl­is­tic range and demon­strate once more her pen­e­trat­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal insight. Here we find the ori­gins of a sin­gu­lar, relent­less voice.