Book Review: It's refreshing to read a story that's purely about a female community

Belgian writer Jacqueline Harper originally published this novel in 1995, only a few years after the release of another masterpiece of feminist speculative fiction, The Handmaid's Tale.

After a long wait, English readers now have a new translation and a thought-provoking introduction by Sophie Mackintosh.

The story is told by an unnamed narrator, who is the youngest prisoner in an underground bunker. She was a baby on arrival, whereas the other women had lived normal lives before an unspecified crisis led to their incarceration.

The women don't understand why they are imprisoned, and their male guards never explain. Readers, therefore, are as ignorant as the imprisoned women, and our confusion is part of the book's brilliance.

The narrator begins her account at the point when she becomes attracted to a young guard and something she doesn't understand is awakened.

Unlike the other women, the narrator has never experienced the full range of human emotion, so her account is dispassionate throughout. But her immunity to emotion becomes her strength later in the narrative.

One day, a siren sounds and the guards are in such a hurry to escape that they leave the key to the women's cage behind. Suddenly, the prisoners are free. But for how long?

After several days, they realise they are truly liberated, but then they spend several years exploring the strange, empty land looking for signs of human life, unsure if they are still on Earth or another planet.

Despite the narrator's dispassion, the book is incredibly moving and beautiful in its simplicity. It's refreshing to read a story that's purely about a female community, but this book is less about feminism than it is about humanism. The book asks the reader to consider whether the narrator, with her lack of standard human experience, is less human than her cellmates.

This central question gives this novel added impact in an era when 'humanity' appears to be in the midst of an existential crisis and many are wondering what will become of us.