‘Maybe this is the last time he will walk down the familiar corridor as the man called Noon Merckem, that door there on the left with those welcoming panes of glass could mean the end of his existence, weak in the knees like a man being dragged to the gallows, that’s how he feels in this instant’
Anjet Daanje
Anjet Daanje is a Dutch writer of novels, short stories and screenplays
Her breakthrough novel, The Remembered Soldier, won the Netherlands’ 2020 F. Bordewijk Prize and the Best Book of Groningen Prize. The Song of Stork and Dromedary won the 2023 Libris Literature Prize, the most prestigious award for Dutch literature, and the Boeekenbon Prize, the Netherlands’ other major literary award – the first time that the Libris and Boekenbon prizes have been won by the same book. It has since been licensed in 13 languages and has sold over 100,000 copies in the Netherlands.
The English language edition of The Remembered Soldier, translated by David McKay, was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026.
Author photo supplied by Scribe UK
In Daanje’s hands, and in McKay’s intuitive translation, the ravages and shellshock of the First World War are superbly traced
The International Booker Prize 2026 judges on The Remembered Soldier
All nominated books
Set in the aftermath of the First World War, this is an extraordinary love story about the power of memory and imagination
