The judges of the 2024 Booker Prize, of which Dutch author Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep was the only shortlisted first novel, described it as “a remarkable debut about obsession and loss…[where] the author draws us into a world as carefully calibrated as a Dutch still-life.”

Set in a rural village in the Netherlands, 15 years after WWII, the quiet life of a lonely young woman is upended by the arrival of an outsider, the “graceless young girlfriend” of her brother.

In yearning prose van der Wouden weaves queer desire and domestic claustrophobia with the long tail of history.

Jenna Todd (Kāi Tahu) joins her to discuss the novel’s success and her expert crafting of a vivid past.