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‘Haunting, powerful … This provocatively labyrinthine novel dissects the consciousness of an amnesiac veteran of World War I who has spent four years in a Belgian asylum only to be retrieved by a woman who insists she is his wife … This marriage, he comes to realise, “is built on quicksand, one false step and they’ll drown together.”’

‘Haunting, powerful … This provocatively labyrinthine novel dissects the consciousness of an amnesiac veteran of World War I who has spent four years in a Belgian asylum only to be retrieved by a woman who insists she is his wife … This marriage, he comes to realise, “is built on quicksand, one false step and they’ll drown together.”’

‘An epic, extraordinary story of love, identity and war Anjet Daanje’s first novel in English is a powerfully vivid portrait of two people dealing with their changed lives after the first world war … David McKay’s page-turning translation faithfully conveys the propulsive nature of Daanje’s long, sinuous sentences … A novel of epic scope that resonates powerfully while wars of tragic loss continue to be fought on multiple fronts, including in Europe. Daanje exhibits brilliant powers of reconstitution in her descriptions of the war’s aftermath and the blighted landscapes that it left behind.’

‘Rich and beguiling ... In Daanje’s novel, memory is mutable and collaborative … As Amand’s experience of reality collapses under the weight of trauma, the prose — in its dearth of partitions and its slick slope of conjunctions — captures a man desperate for firm footing.’

‘The novel’s depictions are minute and comprehensive … Ms. Daanje has a dense, rhythmic writing style that captures how the consciousness of each character flows … In David McKay’s assiduous translation from the Dutch, the sentences tumble forward hypnotically, if often monotonously, from one moment to the next. It’s a prose style that, like Amand, seems to have no past, only a perpetually unspooling present … In its dangerous admixture of truth and lies and reassembled reality, The Remembered Soldier develops an unforgettable picture of marital love.’

‘ The Remembered Soldier is a dazzling exploration of love, longing, and memory in the aftermath of World War I. Anjet Daanje’s rendering of a couple’s interiority as they struggle to claw their deepest desires back from the devastation of war is by turns moving and unsettling, and David McKay’s virtuosic translation draws English readers into the hypnotic unfolding of a narrative that is at once a careful probing of the human mind and a lyrical triumph.’

‘The phenomenal English-language debut from Daanje weaves an affecting love story through a tangle of memories and dreams … The complex and layered narrative is as moving as it is unsettling, and it will keep readers wondering about the truth long after the final page. It’s a remarkable achievement.’

‘This is magnificent, complex writing, exploring the complications to identity, memory, latent anger, and gender dynamics posed by trauma.’

‘A psychologically astute and accomplished novel. The Remembered Soldier is a studied exploration of a marriage and wartime horror. The prose is nothing short of Jamesian in its nuanced depiction of … intimacy, and David McKay’s translation of Daanje’s writing, with all of its subtleties, is truly remarkable.’

‘Grapples with fragile versions of the truth … The Remembered Soldier , a luminous historical novel, mines the seams between a veteran’s traumas and restored hope.’

‘By far the best novel of recent years.’

‘A gripping story … stirring, psychologically profound, and not a page too long.’

‘The book is phenomenal.’

‘This is a story about healing a soldier’s mind after surviving years of carnage, and it is about restoring mutual trust and love after so much has happened … [A]n absorbing tale.’

‘Particularly impressive … a solid, engaging novel, The Remembered Soldier also uses the historical period and place well, making for a rich read.’

‘This is a beautifully written book … [V]ery effective as it brings the reader into the flying thoughts of an injured, tormented, and confused mind. The ending is complicated, but contains a surprise, and the reader is left guessing … Highly recommended.’

‘An ample, absorbing, and justly prize-winning historical novel.’

‘This is a beautiful, sprawling historical novel and love story with enthralling explorations of memory, trust, and connection.’

‘An absorbing, expansive work … never losing the reader’s attention, it’s a story both of individuals and of war. We’re shown another time, another world … Daanje’s work is superb in keeping the pacing up over more than five-hundred pages … and credit must go to McKay for his excellent job … This is a book I highly recommend.’

‘A soldier without his memory; a wife in search of her missing husband … In Daanje’s hands, and in McKay’s intuitive translation, the ravages and shellshock of the First World War are superbly traced — but the big question at the heart of this novel is how far humans will go in order to love.’

‘I’ve never encountered a novel so intensely realistic yet so dreamily rendered. The Remembered Soldier is absolutely singular and utterly bewitching. I could have read it forever.’

‘A World War I soldier with post-traumatic amnesia is identified as the missing husband of a Belgian woman in this intimate epic by the Dutch novelist Anjet Daanje. Returned to a household of which he has no memory, the veteran experiences many emotions: wariness, attraction, love, and lingering fear. The incantatory prose, translated by David McKay, makes ordinary aspects of marital life feel newly discovered.’

‘An ample, absorbing, and justly prize-winning historical novel.’

‘This is a beautiful, sprawling historical novel and love story with enthralling explorations of memory, trust, and connection.’

‘An absorbing, expansive work … never losing the reader’s attention, it’s a story both of individuals and of war. We’re shown another time, another world … Daanje’s work is superb in keeping the pacing up over more than five-hundred pages … and credit must go to McKay for his excellent job … This is a book I highly recommend.’

‘Brilliant … It’s a knockout.’

Anjet Daanje writes novels, short stories, and screenplays. Her breakthrough novel, The Remembered Soldier, won the Netherlands’ 2020 F. Bordewijk Prize and the Best Book of Groningen Prize. The Song of Stork and Dromedary won the 2023 Libris Literature Prize, the most prestigious award for Dutch literature, and the Boekenbon Prize, the Netherlands’ other major literary award — the first time that the Libris and Boekenbon prizes have been won by the same book. It has since been licensed in 13 languages and has sold over 100,000 copies in the Netherlands. Scribe has licensed North American rights in its edition to Farrar, Straus and Giroux. David McKay is an award-winning translator of Dutch fiction and nonfiction. Born and educated in the United States, he has lived in and around The Hague since 1997.