A trio of novellas by Jacqueline Harpman exploring survival, desire, and defiance through the eyes of three different women. In the wake of an unfathomable war, a woman wanders a forest with fellow survivors forbidden from ever leaving its boundaries or pausing their eternal march. A teenage girl at a rigid French school in 1940s Casablanca is barred from questioning the dogma she is taught. A young woman locked in a loveless Belgian bourgeois marriage satisfies her husband’s desires as required, twice weekly, and has not yet thought to pursue her own. First published in French decades ago, these are among the first of Harpman’s works to arrive in English in years, translated by Ros Schwartz.