European Writers Salon is delighted to invite you to join us for the second of our quarterly Café Littéraire: European Book Club.
Each quarter we read a different book and discuss it, occasionally (we hope) joined by the author or a scholar of their work.
Quarter One - we will discuss a book from the International Booker Longlist or Shortlist from this year or past years.
Quarter Two - we will discuss a classic European text in translation.
Quarter Three - we will discuss a gem of European literature you may not have come across before.
Quarter Four - we will discuss a book by a current or past Nobel Prize recipient.
Your host is Eleonora Balsano, Associate Director of European Writers Salon. Eleonora is an Italian-born writer based in Brussels. In 2023, Eleonora was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, long listed for the Wigleaf Top 50 and in 2021 she was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. She is the host and producer of Chosen Tongue, a podcast dedicated to translingual writers and their journeys. You can find her on Twitter @norami, Instagram @ebalwriter, and on her website: eleonorabalsano.net.
This quarter, our book will be Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men.
Harpman was a Belgian writer who died in 2012 aged 82. Discover her haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic tale of female friendship and intimacy set in a deserted world.
Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?
Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone and outcast in the corner.
Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men.
NB the time is CET so the start time is 6pm GMT, 7pm CET.
