",A magical novel on the theme of androgyny. Funny, subtle, poignant...", - Nadine Sautel, Magazine litteraire",Jacqueline Harpman drags us into one of those sexual phantasmagorias that are her own secret. She displays incredible confidence in juggling identities and meshing together yearnings and phobias, fantasies and frustrations", - T G, L'ExpressHow would it be to jump into the skin of another? To be both a man and a woman at once? And what would happen if you found yourself attracted to yourself?Beneath a mousy exterior, 35-year-old college lecturer Aline seethes with frustration. Sick of being bullied by her mother and treated like a piece of furniture by Albert, her live-in lover, one day Aline leaps from her own skin into the far more attractive body of Lucien, whom she spots in a caf at the Gare du Nord. From here this brilliantly imaginative story runs on parallel lines. While Aline sensibly catches the train back to her orderly life, Aline-Lucien - or Orlanda, as her bold new composite self is called in homage to Virginia Woolf - follows, dragging chaos in his wake.Jacqueline Harpman, herself once a psychoanalyst, revels in the confusion, as ego falls for alter ego and mothers, sisters and lovers begin to ask awkward questions in this unusual perceptive comedy of double selves and bisexuality.",Undoubtedly this is a novel to breathe life into characters through the unfettered use of the imagination. It offers a pretext for a great deal of humour and fantasy that stirs up the old myths' - Andr Brincourt, FigaroWinner of the Prix Mdicis.

'THE '90S GENDER SWAP NOVEL YOU NEED TO READ NOW' (NEW YORK TIMES), **FROM THE AUTHOR OF I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN**

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.

READER REVIEWS - JOIN THE ORLANDA OBSESSION:
'Hilarious, life affirming, haunting...truly perfect in prose, plot, and concept. Just wow'
'A powerful novel, witty, wicked and teasing'
'It's the perfect book'
'This is the second book I've read by her and it's another masterpiece'
'Reading this has confirmed Jacqueline Harpman as one of my favourite writers I've ever encountered'

Autorentext

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