We Were Forbidden

From the author of I Who Have Never Known Men comes a startling new collection of three never-before-translated stories, each plumbing the depths of that most necessary human instinct: defiance. Wandering the forest in the wake of some unfathomable war, a woman and her fellow survivors are forbidden from leaving its boundaries or pausing in their march through its strange depths. As part of her rigid shcooling, a teenage girl is barred from questioning the dogma she is taught to believe - her punishment for doing so will be as disturbing as it is disproportiante. Locked in a loveless marriage, a young woman satisfies her husband''s desires, twice-weekly, as directed. She has not yet thought to pursue her own. In varying ways, and across varying worlds, each of these women are trapped. Do they have the will to escape? BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

About the author

Jacqueline Harpman

Product details

• Authors: Jacqueline Harpman, Harpman Jacqueline
• Publisher: Vintage UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Release: 02.07.2026
• EAN: 9781529984583
• ISBN: 978-1-5299-8458-3
• No. of pages: 112
• Series: Brief Encounters
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; FICTION / War & Military, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), FICTION / Literary, FICTION / Dystopian, FICTION / Jewish, Fiction in translation, FICTION / Visionary & Metaphysical, FICTION / Feminist, Dystopian and utopian fiction, Relating to Jewish people and groups, Novella (Short Novel), Biographical fiction / autobiographical fiction, Metaphysical / philosophical fiction, Narrative theme: war and conflict, FICTION / Biographical & Autofiction, Classic fiction: literary and general