Book Club Guide

The Safekeep

by Yael van der Wouden · 2024 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

A house that holds what was taken — and from whom
Suspicion as a way of life — and what desire does to it
The Netherlands after the war and what was never returned

About this book

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.

Published in 2024, The Safekeep won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2025. Van der Wouden is Dutch-Israeli and has described the novel as engaging with the largely unaddressed history of Dutch collaboration and the seizure of Jewish property during the German occupation.

Discussion questions

Isabel is suspicious of everyone, especially Eva — and that suspicion gradually transforms into something else. How does van der Wouden develop this shift — and what does the slow pace achieve?
The house itself becomes central to the novel's argument — what it contains, who it belonged to, what it conceals. How does van der Wouden use the house as both setting and revelation?
The novel is set in 1961 but reaches back to the war years and the Dutch experience of occupation, including the treatment of Jewish property and families. How does van der Wouden integrate this history — and what does the slow reveal accomplish?
The relationship between Isabel and Eva develops against Isabel's instincts and self-image. How does van der Wouden develop desire as something that disrupts a carefully maintained identity?
The Safekeep won the Women's Prize for Fiction as a debut novel. What does it do that earns this recognition — and how does its quiet, controlled style serve a story about things that were violently taken?