The Mistress of Silence

Book excerpt: In an underground cage forty women are held prisoner, guarded by men who do not talk to them. The women have been there for fifteen years. Some cataclysm brought them to their prison but their memories of it have begun to ebb. The narrator was brought to the cage as a baby and can recollect nothing else. One day a siren sounds just as the guards have put the key in the lock. The guards all turn and flee. The narrator reaches through, turns the key and the forty women escape. Surfacing from their underground prison, they find themselves gazing across a seemingly limitless steppe. Taking provisions from the prison larder, they set out in search of civilization and the world of men. Jacqueline Harpman's strange and disturbing fable is a beautifully written story of the effects of deprivation, loss of memory and the denial of human affection.