We Were Forbidden

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 schooling, 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 disproportionate.

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 is trapped. Do they have the will to escape?

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