Orlanda

There’s a voice in Aline’s head: a voice that wants out.

Brash, boisterous and sexually adventurous, this voice seems to be the antithesis of Aline, a prim literature professor for whom each day promises to be as quiet and conventional as the last.

That is until, after thirty-five years of imprisonment, her alter ego breaks free.

Taking on a life of his own, Orlanda – Aline’s second self – slips into the taut, rugged body of a young man. As Aline continues unaware, Orlanda follows, dragging gleeful chaos in his wake, vowing to leave both their existences forever altered.

A bewitching fable, an androgynous dream, Orlanda is one woman’s reckoning with all the hidden sides of her soul.

About the Author

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