The Remembered Soldier - Paperback

by Anjet Daanje (Author), David McKay (Translator)

"Phenomenal . . . 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."--Publishers Weekly (Starred review)

An extraordinary love story and a captivating novel about the power of memory and imagination: Flanders 1922. After serving as a soldier in the Great War, Noon Merckem has lost his memory and lives in a psychiatric asylum. Countless women, responding to a newspaper ad, visit him there in the hope of finding their spouse who vanished in battle. One day a woman, Julienne, appears and recognizes Noon as her husband, the photographer Amand Coppens, and takes him home against medical advice. But their miraculous reunion doesn't turn out the way that Julienne wants her envious friends to believe. Only gradually do the two grow close, and Amand's biography is pieced together on the basis of Julienne's stories about him. But how can he be certain that she's telling the truth? In The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje immerses us in the psyche of a war-traumatized man who has lost his identity. When Amand comes to doubt Julienne's word, the reader is caught up in a riveting spiral of confusion that only the greatest of literature can achieve.

Author Biography

Anjet Daanje, the pseudonym of Anjet den Boer who was born in 1965, writes novels, short stories, and screenplays. The Remembered Soldier has won the top literary prizes in her native Netherlands, including the 2020 F. Bordewijk Prize, the Best Book of Groningen Prize, and was longlisted for the 2020 Libris Literature Prize.

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.