With Total Impunity

byJacqueline Harpman, Ros Schwartz (Translator)

Format:

Pre-order:

Amazon Blackwells Bookshop.org Foyles Hive TGJones Waterstones

The first new novel in English from Jaqueline Harpman since the sensational I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN.

A subtly unsettling, mesmerising tale following a secretive family of matriarchs willing to do anything to protect their crumbing ancestral home.

After his car breaks down on a dark country lane, a lone male architect is stranded in the depths of the French backcountry. The only house for miles is a crumbling 18th-century mansion, exquisite despite its disrepair. With one knock at the door, he finds himself propelled into a bewitching all-female household.

But when marriage brings an unwelcome intruder into this ragged matriarchy, the family will stop at nothing to defend their home and their freedoms - by any means necessary.

About Jacqueline Harpman

Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium in 1929. Being half Jewish, the family fled to Casablanca when the Nazis invaded, and only returned home after the war. After studying French literature she started training to be a doctor, but could not complete her training due to contracting tuberculosis. She turned to writing in 1954 and her first work was published in 1958. In 1980 she qualified as a psychoanalyst. Harpman wrote over 15 novels and won numerous literary prizes, including the Prix Médicis for Orlanda. I Who Have Never Known Men was her first novel to be translated into English, and was originally published with the title The Mistress of Silence

Learn more

Details