NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
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THE NEW YORK TIMES “The Best Historical Fiction Novels to Read Right Now”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 2025 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

‘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.’ Tobias Grey in The Financial Times

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 recognises 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-traumatised 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 works of literature can achieve.

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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.”’

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‘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.’

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‘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.’

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‘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.’

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

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‘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.’

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‘By far the best novel of recent years.’

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

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‘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.’

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

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‘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.’

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

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

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‘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.’