The Safekeep - Yael van der Wouden
TT$170.00
Fiction Literary Booker Prize Short List 2024 An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge. Hardcover 272 pages Viking 2024
Fiction Literary Booker Prize Short List 2024 An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge. Hardcover 272 pages Viking 2024
It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother's country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep - as a guest, there to stay for the season…
In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate need for control reaches boiling point. What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known.
Yael van der Wouden is a writer and teacher. She currently lectures in creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands. Her essay on Dutch identity and Jewishness, "On (Not) Reading Anne Frank", has received a notable mention in The Best American Essays 2018. The Safekeep is her debut novel and was acquired in hotly-contested nine-way auctions in both the UK and the US. Rights have sold in a further twelve countries. In 2024 it was longlisted for the Booker Prize.