Jacqueline Harpman

Jacqueline Harpman (1929-2012) was a Belgian novelist and psychoanalyst, born in Etterbeek, Brussels. Her Jewish family spent the Second World War in Casablanca before returning to Belgium. She began studying medicine, left it, and later trained as a psychoanalyst, practising for most of her life.

Her first novel, Brève Arcadie, won the Prix Victor-Rossel in 1959, and she returned to writing in the 1980s. Orlanda won the Prix Médicis in 1996. Her best-known book in English is I Who Have Never Known Men (Moi qui n'ai pas connu les hommes, 1995), translated by Ros Schwartz.