A little known book published 30 years ago became a bestseller after Trump's re -election and exploded Tiktok: “It's extraordinary!”

Described now as the “story of the servant” (The Handmaid's Tale) of the Z generation, the novel of Belgian writer Jacqueline Harpman, “I, who I have never met a man,” has already sold over 435,000 copies, and more than half of them were bought in the United States, La Libre Belgique.

“Did Jacqueline Harpman imagined, when she wrote in one night, during a vacation, the novel's narrative thread Moi qui n'ai pale connu les hommes .

The novel, the tenth of the literary career of the Belgian writer and psychoanalyst, was published in his native country by Stock Publishing House in 1995. He was then one of the finalists for Prix Femina, the French literary award granted every year by a jury composed of women. The prize established in 1904 is awarded to works in French, written in prose or in lyrics, authors or author.

The novel I, who have never met a manYou have been translated since 1995 and published in the US, by a New York publishing house. But in the years he followed he was mostly forgotten.

An editor from Penguin Random House rediscovered in 2018 and, encouraged by the new enthusiasm for the novel The story of the servant of Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, obtained the republishing of Harpman's book in the UK in 2019, and in the United States in 2022.

A series launched after Trump's first victory brought to attention another book

Interest in The story of the servantnovel initially published in 1985 with the title The storytelist's storywas reborn internationally after HBO launched a series based on it in 2017.

The series was launched a few months after Donald Trump's victory at the 2016 presidential elections and amid a wave of conservative victories in the United States that caused concerns about respecting women's rights.

Atwood's dystopian novel and the series based on it imagines a close future in which a theocratic, totalitarian and patriarchal regime, “Republic of Galaad”, overturned the United States government. The waitresses, or the servants, are forced to make children for “commanders”, the leading class in Galaad.

The novel explores topics such as losing female will and individuality in a totalitarian patriarchal society, suppressing reproductive rights and various ways in which women are resistant and try to regain their identity and independence.

What is the 1995 novel of the Belgian writer

As with Atwood's novel, Harpman's image presents the image of a dystopian future, his story starting with a group of 39 women, and “a girl without name and without past”, which are held in an underground cage.

Armed guards are all men and never talk to them. The girl is the only prisoners who have no memory about the outside world. None of them know why prisoners are kept or why a child is among 39 adults.

One day, an alarm is heard, and the guards run. The prisoners thus manage to escape. They wake up on a huge, stear plain, without other people around and without any idea what happened to the world.

“What is to be done when, suddenly, you find yourself under the open sky, without landmarks or resources, abandoned themselves? After joy and ulcuial, the women's community starts in a wandering that will take them from guard to guard, from cellar to cellar, from the corpse to the corpse,” adaptation.

Harpman's 1995 novel “reflects current female concerns, especially since Trump was re -elected, and women's rights and fundamental freedoms are threatened,” Libre points out.

The book was pRomotive massively on Tiktok

The Supreme Court of the US eliminated in June 2022 the guarantee of the right to abortion at the federal level, which allowed the conservative states to impose in some cases the draconian anti-abortion laws. Harpman's novel was republished in the US in a new edition just a month before.

But I, who I never met a man He became a bestseller only recently. Of the more than 435,000 copies sold in recent years, more than half were bought by Americans: 100,000 last year, when the US was in the election campaign, and 130,000 in the first 5 months of this year.

And success is expected to be a global one, mostly fueled by reviews and video messages published on Tiktok about Roman.

“We have already sold the rights in 31 countries. It is extraordinary!”, Said Raphaëlle Liebaert, publishers, for La Libre, while expressing her happiness caused by the destiny of this novel.

“A whole generation of readers discovered the text. The type of type 'word in word', amplified by social networks, with well-known, Booktook influences, said, following a feminist reading of the text-which, in fact, was not the main intention of Jacqueline Harpman,” she said.

“Her text is of amazing modernity. It has not aged neither in style nor content,” Liebaert gives. Jacqueline Harpman died in 2012, without seeing the commercial success of her novel at 3 decades after her publication.

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