Yael van der Wouden

(1987) is a writer and teacher of creative writing and comparative literature. Together with Daphne Huisden and Simone Atangana Bekono, she wrote the mosaic narrative Vlucht/Dans/Vondst (Flight/Dance/Finding, 2023). Her debut as a novelist The Safekeep (2024) is one of six books shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. The Safekeep is set in the rural Dutch Overijssel province in the early 1960s. Isabel lives alone in her late mother's house, where everything quietly rolls along until her brother Louis shows up on her doorstep with his new girlfriend Eva to spend the summer with her. Eva is the opposite of Isabel in everything. Then little things start disappearing from the house. Feverishly, Isabel keeps an eye on the new woman, until, at the height of the sweltering hot summer, she makes a mysterious discovery that unravels all she has ever known.