Shortlisted for The Booker Prize this year, Van der Wouden's sharp and sexy debut novel is set in The Netherlands 16 years after World War Two. Its protagonist is Isabel, an uptight, controlled and humourless figure who lives alone in her family's countryside home, shunning outsiders, intimacy and joy. All this begins to be broken apart when her brother's girlfriend, Eva, comes to stay. Amid the sweltering heat of the summer, tensions between the two women simmer, and truths are uncovered, leading to the plot's central, devastating revelation. "A quietly remarkable book" writes The New York Times of The Safekeep: "the story is resolved in such a bold and tender way that it becomes not merely clever, but indelible." The Washington Post praises The Safekeep as: "the rare novel about World War Two, the Holocaust and their aftermath that succeeds in feeling fully, intimately human". (RL)

First published May 28, 2024