The Women's Prize for Fiction To A Dutch Debut Novel
- Erkiulis
- Jun 16
- 1 min read
One more book can be added to the best book list of 2025. It's Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep, which just won the 30th Women's Prize for Fiction.
This unsettling, tightly-plotted debut novel explores repressed desire and historical amnesia against the backdrop of the Netherlands post-WWII.
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.
The Safekeep is Yael van Wouden's debut novel, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.
