We Were Forbidden

by Jacqueline Harpman, Ros Schwartz (Translator)

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 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 classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Genres: Short Stories, Speculative Fiction, Literary Fiction, Fiction

112 pages, Paperback

Expected publication July 7, 2026

About the author

Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929. Being half Jewish, the family moved to Casablanca when the Nazis invaded, and returned home after the war. After studying French literature she started training to be a doctor, but could not complete her medical studies when she contracted tuberculosis. She turned to writing in 1954 and her first work was published in 1958. In 1980 she qualified as a psychoanalyst. She had given up writing after her fourth book was published, and resumed her career as a novelist only some twenty years later. She wrote twelve novels and won several literary prizes, most recently the Médicis for the present novel. She was married to an architect and had two children.

Reviews

[Livvie Boylan]

I have been waiting for more Jacqueline Harpman to be translated I am SO EXCITED

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harpman’s style of prose is great (at least in translation), but these stories left me ultimately unsatisfied

[mari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three of the best short stories I’ve ever read.

[Epickkasten · Rating 4 out of 5]

We Were Forbidden is a short collection of three stories by Jacqueline Harpman that has finally received an English translation. Arriving in the wake of the renewed success of I Who Have Never Known Men, this collection offers an excellent showcase of Harpman’s versatility.

The first story, "The Ardennes Forest," follows a group of soldiers patrolling a forest for so long they no longer know if the war has even ended. It evokes that same eerie, unsettling atmosphere that made her most famous novel so unforgettable. This is followed by "The Outcast," a semi-autobiographical story about the author as a young girl who defiantly stood her ground and defended her beliefs against the rigid structures of her school. The third story, "The Broom Closet," is a meandering reimagining of a young woman’s spectacular extramarital affair.

I highly enjoyed these three stories, and I would love to see more of Harpman’s work translated into English soon!