The Safekeep
by Yael van der Wouden · 2024
Literary Fiction · ranked #241 in category
Winner · The Women's Prize for Fiction, 2025
In 1961 in the rural Netherlands, Isabel lives alone in the house she inherited, suspicious of everyone — until her brother's girlfriend Eva comes to stay, and Isabel's careful, controlled life begins to unravel as she discovers what the house actually conceals about the war years. Van der Wouden's Women's Prize-winning debut is a slow-burn novel about desire, guilt and the things postwar Europe chose not to remember.
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The verdict
- Category
- Literary Fiction
- Author
- Yael van der Wouden
- Standing
- Essential Read
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