2025 Dylan Thomas Prize (shortlist)
2025 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction
2025 Walter Scott Prize for Best Historical Novel (shortlist)
2025 Women's Prize For Fiction
2024 Booker Prize (shortlist)
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2025
LONGLISTED FOR THE WINGATE PRIZE 2025
An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement.
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.
'A thrilling, razor-sharp, perfectly plotted debut novel'Sunday Times
'Moving, unnerving and deeply sexy' Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING
'A brave and thrilling debut about facing up to the truth of history, and to one's own desires… Van der Wouden brings stunning power and control to her page-turner about trauma and repression' Justine Jordan, Booker Prize Judge 2024
Genre: Literary Fiction
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2025
LONGLISTED FOR THE WINGATE PRIZE 2025
An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement.
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.
'A thrilling, razor-sharp, perfectly plotted debut novel'Sunday Times
'Moving, unnerving and deeply sexy' Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING
'A brave and thrilling debut about facing up to the truth of history, and to one's own desires… Van der Wouden brings stunning power and control to her page-turner about trauma and repression' Justine Jordan, Booker Prize Judge 2024
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Moving, unnerving and deeply sexy." - Tracy Chevalier
"A strange, dream-like and troubling book, as haunting as the history it examines. Yael Van der Wouden is an extraordinarily powerful writer: it's hard to believe this can be her first book." - Cressida Connolly
"Haunting and exquisitely poignant." - Claire Fuller
"A beautiful book. Incredibly well-observed, surprising, and deeply textured." - Emma Healey
"The Safekeep is a dream of a novel - mesmerizing and shockingly good - it lulls you with the lyrical beauty of its words and then slams you awake with its raw passion and rage. Part silent scream, part breathless love story - I was utterly blown away." - Miranda Cowley Heller
"The Safekeep is thrilling: a riveting historical reconciliation and an impossible yet inevitable love story. Superbly wrought-serious, elegant, sexy, devastating." - Julia May Jonas
"The Safekeep is a beautiful book, highly charged, tense, shocking and heartbreaking in equal measure... One of those rare books that feels as if it's been there all along, waiting to be given a voice. And what a voice this is." - Rachel Joyce
"This is a stealthy, simmering novel about complicity and the lies we live by." - Clare Pollard
"An astonishingly skillful debut, The Safekeep manages the rare trick of being both gripping and intimate. A twisting, elegant, intriguing story about the secrets we hide in our homes and hearts - and how it only takes one person to unlock the past." - Joanna Quinn
"Surprising, chilling, and electric. The Safekeep is a simply fantastic work of literature." - Alice Winn
"A strange, dream-like and troubling book, as haunting as the history it examines. Yael Van der Wouden is an extraordinarily powerful writer: it's hard to believe this can be her first book." - Cressida Connolly
"Haunting and exquisitely poignant." - Claire Fuller
"A beautiful book. Incredibly well-observed, surprising, and deeply textured." - Emma Healey
"The Safekeep is a dream of a novel - mesmerizing and shockingly good - it lulls you with the lyrical beauty of its words and then slams you awake with its raw passion and rage. Part silent scream, part breathless love story - I was utterly blown away." - Miranda Cowley Heller
"The Safekeep is thrilling: a riveting historical reconciliation and an impossible yet inevitable love story. Superbly wrought-serious, elegant, sexy, devastating." - Julia May Jonas
"The Safekeep is a beautiful book, highly charged, tense, shocking and heartbreaking in equal measure... One of those rare books that feels as if it's been there all along, waiting to be given a voice. And what a voice this is." - Rachel Joyce
"This is a stealthy, simmering novel about complicity and the lies we live by." - Clare Pollard
"An astonishingly skillful debut, The Safekeep manages the rare trick of being both gripping and intimate. A twisting, elegant, intriguing story about the secrets we hide in our homes and hearts - and how it only takes one person to unlock the past." - Joanna Quinn
"Surprising, chilling, and electric. The Safekeep is a simply fantastic work of literature." - Alice Winn
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