Fiction books about depersonalization or derealization
Like the stranger by campus, for instance, where the main character feels hollow and like they’re in a different dimension from other people. Like they’re trapped inside their head.
{{I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman}}
The MC doesn’t feel trapped in her own head, but she feels inhuman because of the world she’s grown up in. She’s 1 of 40 female prisoners in an underground bunker and she’s the only one that was effectively born there. They don’t allow touching so she grew up not being nurtured. As a result, she doesn’t connect with the others.
From the afterword:
> She is an example of a person raised without culture, without societal constructs, without knowledge. She is a pure experiment asking: what does a person become when stripped to the core, raised in isolation? What might a woman be like under these conditions? It is testament to the strength and beauty of this novel that she remains a character too, not just a device; she is formed, sympathetic, and possessing both curiosity and courage.
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{{I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman}}
The MC doesn’t feel trapped in her own head, but she feels inhuman because of the world she’s grown up in. She’s 1 of 40 female prisoners in an underground bunker and she’s the only one that was effectively born there. They don’t allow touching so she grew up not being nurtured. As a result, she doesn’t connect with the others.
From the afterword:
> She is an example of a person raised without culture, without societal constructs, without knowledge. She is a pure experiment asking: what does a person become when stripped to the core, raised in isolation? What might a woman be like under these conditions? It is testament to the strength and beauty of this novel that she remains a character too, not just a device; she is formed, sympathetic, and possessing both curiosity and courage.
“El tunnel” Ernesto Sabato
“Le Solitaire” Eugène Ionesco
“Menuet” Louis Paul Boon
{{Piranesi}}