De herinnerde soldaat

by Anjet Daanje, Chris Kijne (Narrator)

Tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog wordt vlak achter de Belgische frontlinie een soldaat gevonden. Hij is niet gewond, maar weet niet wie hij is. Men brengt hem naar een gesticht voor krankzinnigen. Vier jaar na de oorlog vindt hij via een advertentie zijn familie terug. Hij blijkt Amand Coppens te heten en hij heeft een vrouw, Julienne, en twee kinderen.

Julienne neemt hem mee naar huis, maar hij herinnert zich zijn leven met haar niet. Het is een vreemde, ongemakkelijke situatie, ook voor haar. Ze vertelt hem over hun verleden en hij probeert de man te worden die hij ooit was, en zo worden ze opnieuw verliefd, veel verliefder dan ze ooit waren toen ze jaren geleden met elkaar trouwden.

Naarmate hij zich meer op zijn gemak voelt in zijn nieuwe leven krijgt hij vaker nachtmerries over zijn tijd in de loopgraven. Het ergste vindt hij nog wel dat hij, afgaand op zijn nachtmerries, van de door hem begane gruwelijkheden heeft genoten; dat kan hij zichzelf niet vergeven.

De herinnerde soldaat is een roman over het begrip ‘identiteit’. Amand heeft geen echte identiteit omdat hij geen herinneringen van voor 1918 heeft. Hij moet zich in de wereld zien te redden zonder het houvast van het verleden.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, War, World War I, Literary Fiction, Historical, Dutch Literature

536 pages, Audiobook

First published November 22, 2019

About the author

Anjet Daanje (1965) is schrijfster van romans en verhalen, en voorheen ook filmscenario's. Haar negende roman "Het lied van ooievaar en dromedaris" stond wekenlang in bestsellerlijsten, en won de Libris Literatuurprijs én de Boekenbonliteratuurprijs (voorheen AKO-literatuuprijs), en is daarmee de enige roman die ooit beide grote prijzen kreeg toegekend. Haar achtste roman "De herinnerde soldaat" won de F. Bordewijkprijs 2020. Voor haar gehele oeuvre won ze de Constantijn Huygensprijs 2023.

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating: 2025's SIX stars of five from me!

LONGLISTED for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, US & Canada, 2025!

Wall Street Journal's The 10 Best Books of 2025

A New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2025 selection
One of LitHub's 100 Notable Small Press Books for 2025!

The Publisher Says: 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.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Deeply satisfying, immersive, emotionally intense, and really long.

Okay. You can go buy one now. Ebook, trade paper, whatever, the choice is yours on format. Reading it ought not to be a choice not to.

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, as the hope that sustained him, the certainty that everything would be new and better beyond imagining and normal at last, that he would pass through that everyday door and be another man when he came out, a man with a home and a family and a life outside these walls, all drains away. And he comes to a halt on the sun-dappled tiles and Brother Reginald turns toward him and sees the desperation on his face and murmurs that God will never test Noon more harshly than he can bear, and gives an encouraging nod, and Noon remains silent, because in his four years here he has not seen much to reassure him about God's notions of what is bearable.

The ecstatic terror of being someone..."this is what it is like to be someone"...who belongs to someone, who is known to someone, whose voice and habits and smells aren't case notes but facts of a shared life...permeates Noon (Amand now) from every axis and angle. Julienne is now real. He has a wife and she not only knows him but wants him (unlike other men in the asylum whose wives families whoevers do not have strength to bear them up) back with her and their children (children? oh god) to create anew the life that war stole from them all. But here are losses too, what is to become of Basiel his electively mute buddy? what of Maurice Constant Jules? and this is where Julienne becomes, to my mind, the single luckiest person on this planet to rediscover a man she was amazingly lucky to find in the first place. He (Amand) has room in his hour of grace bestowed to care for and about those he will leave to become someone, restored to life, to his life again. At last. But the men he leaves in the asylum? Only in body. They're still with him.

Bodies. How incredibly important bodies are in, and after, war breaks them. A body is a thing we use to carry our memories that grow our feelings and shape our personas. All of those are plurals. Plurality and duality and dichotomy are the lot of all bodies, most especially as we move them through...whatever time is, listen if the physics geniuses assembled at Solvay in Belgium a mere five years after this book takes place didn't have a clue what time *is* what chance do I have...time, and things happen to around in us. Children, for example, happen. How? "The usual way" glibly tossed off, but how usual is any way?

What makes me so very happy as I re-experience this story after abandoning it back in March, stuck in my hate-fog as Felonious Yam and cronies began their assault on us, only to pick it up on Thursday morning and finish all close-to-six-hundred pages on Friday afternoon, is the respect for my intelligence this book embodies from beginning to end. Julienne never once comes across as anything other than sincere, Amand never steps into any role but the one of honorable man, no one tells me what to think of their foibles, failings, fallings-short.

What I look for, every time I pick out a story to read, is the one that will make it impossible for me to do the ordinary thing, find faults, even ones that normal people wouldn't care about, and instead surrender to the story's currents and tides, falling in falling down falling in love.

That's what happened here. I hope you'll follow me, hope you'll have that experience, hope this read will fulfill you the way it did me.

I'll note that Goodreads has hundreds of Flemish-language reviews that award four and five stars.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“And near morning he is awakened by a buzzing noise, it’s coming from himself, he is humming, and he’s so happy, he can’t remember ever having felt anything of the kind, it’s grand and majestic and all-encompassing, like surveying and understanding every facet of life, as if he’s not a person but a god. He dreamed, he doesn’t know what exactly, about the war, he thinks, and that makes his happiness frightening, it forces itself on him as if assaulting him, and he tries to shake off the feeling, but he doesn’t really want it to go away, it repels him and at the same time he longs for it, the way he longs for her body, and maybe he didn’t dream about the war but about her, he can’t separate one from the other, as if the war springs from her, or she springs from the war.”

562 pages of sheer beauty.

Flanders, 1922. A war-traumatized soldier who was found lost and amnesiac on the battlefield is living in an asylum when one day, a woman named Julienne recognizes him as her husband, the photographer Amand Coppens, and decides to bring him home.

What follows is an utterly gripping and feverish psychological portrait of two ordinary people caught between the hazy aftershocks of war and their attempt at rebuilding a life from the few fractured pieces they’ve gathered, the memories they seek and the images that begin to emerge from the rubble.

Carried by paragraphs that feel like waves, written with the force of a rising tide, you will be completely swallowed by a story constantly oscillating between the mundane and the sublime, the real and the imagined, taking root in the infinitely moving minutiae of daily life and the black stickiness of nightmares.

A thriller. A love story. An anti-war manifesto.
An ode to storytelling, and what we tell ourselves in order to be(come).

I’ll take a wild guess and say that you will not read anything this year as electrifying, rousing and breathtaking as this stupendous novel from the Netherlands, superbly translated by David McKay.

Anjet Daanje is one hell of a pulsating star.

[Truusje Truffel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wie was ik, wie ben ik, wie wil ik zijn?

Op de Beurs van Bijzondere Uitgevers werd dit boek door de Groningse uitgever Anton Scheepstra himself, aangeprezen als een indrukwekkende, historische roman met een absoluut literair gehalte. Wij van WC-eend..? Hij bleek de plank echter niet misgeslagen te hebben. Voortdurend herhalende patronen, personages die bijna eindeloos om elkaar heen blijven draaien en een verhaal dat in lange zinnen met cyclische bewegingen meandert, waardoor je een gestaag repeterende beweging gewaarwordt. En dat in een vuistdikke roman van 536 pagina's. Oersaai? Absoluut niet! FENOMENAAL!

Anjet Daanje (Wijster, 1965) heeft acht romans op haar naam staan en is, tot ongenoegen van Kees 't Hart, nooit echt doorgebroken bij het grote publiek. Tót het verschijnen van haar laatste roman, De herinnerde soldaat, die op 22 mei jl. is het beloond met de titel Beste Groninger Boek 2020 en is opgenomen in de Longlist Libris Literatuurprijs 2020.
Al tijdens haar middelbare schooltijd maakt ze - samen met haar broer - twee speelfilms en zeven scenario's voor hoorspelen. Na haar studie wiskunde verschijnt in 1993 haar eerste roman en legt ze zich succesvol toe op het schrijven van filmscenario's en een televisieserie.

Het verhaal speelt zich af in Kortrijk - België, in de jaren na de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Noen Merckem slijt al vier jaar zijn dagen in een gesticht. Hij is als soldaat gevonden achter het Belgische front, niet gewond, maar verward, niet aanspreekbaar en verstoken van enige herinnering van het leven dat hij daarvoor heeft geleid. Zijn naam dankt hij aan de plaats waar ze hem hebben gevonden. Hij is er tevreden, heeft zijn werk in de moestuin, belijdt zijn geloof en vindt houvast bij de voorspelbaarheid van de dagelijkse dingen.

Dan verschijnt er een vrouw die in hem haar echtgenoot herkent: Amand Coppens, 35 jaar oud en eind 1917 vermist geraakt. Alles klopt en acht jaar nadat ze haar man ten strijde heeft zien vertrekken, kan Julienne hem eindelijk weer mee naar huis nemen.

Onwennig maakt hij kennis met het huis, de twee kinderen en het leven met Julienne. In eerste instantie zijn de kinderen afhoudend en brengt hij zijn nachten door op de bank, maar langzamerhand wennen ze aan het leven met elkaar.

'En ineens staat zij in haar nachtpon in de deuropening, en hij weet niet zeker of ze er wel echt is, of hij toch niet ongemerkt in slaap is gevallen, en zij had er niet op gerekend dat hij wakker zou zijn, ze mompelt betrapt dat ze naar de koer moet, en hij is haar zo dankbaar dat ze hem van deze nacht komt verlossen, ze steekt haar hand naar hem uit, en hij weet dat hij het niet moet doen, maar hij loopt naar haar toe en hij pakt haar warme vingers beet en laat zich door haar meevoeren de trappen op naar hun slaapkamer, naar hun bed, waar hij veilig naast haar kan liggen.'

Amand en Julienne vinden elkaar in de liefde, maken plezier en het gezin vindt zijn draai met elkaar. Ze vertelt hem hoe ze elkaar hebben leren kennen, dat ze uit een totaal verschillend milieu komen, waar ze de eerste keer hebben gevrijd en dat hij haar en hun tweejarige zoon verliet om mee te strijden in de loopgraven. Voor de oorlog was hij fotograaf en zij heeft hun zaak al die jaren draaiende gehouden. Geduldig leert ze hem de kneepjes van het vak weer en samen runnen ze de winkel: zij fotografeert en hij doet het werk in de donkere kamer. Heel lucratief is haar idee om oorlogsweduwen te fotograferen, met Amand in soldatenuniform achter hen. Julienne retoucheert de foto's en met verbazing ziet hij dat ze zijn gezicht iedere keer weer een andere uitstraling weet te geven, passend bij de overledene wiens plaats hij op de foto inneemt. Zoals ze de foto's retoucheert, retoucheert ze ook hun leven. Een prachtige metafoor!

Ondanks haar geduldige verhalen, is Amand regelmatig wat achterdochtig en vraagt haar dan uit. Hoe het zit met de waarheid? Dat is niet alleen iets wat hém bezighoudt, maar ook de lezer heeft het gevoel op het verkeerde been gezet te worden door zijn vrouw.

In de gehele roman blijft het perspectief bij de protagonist, Amand, waardoor de lezer, dieper dan diep, onder zijn huid kan kruipen en zich in kan leven in zijn gedachten- en ervaringswereld. De auteur heeft hier echter niet gekozen voor het ik-perspectief, maar voor de derde persoon enkelvoud. Opvallend is dat het verhaal volledig in de tegenwoordige tijd is geschreven, zodat het chronologisch is opgebouwd en de lezer zich probleemloos kan verplaatsen in de eerste jaren na de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Het tijdsbeeld en de toen geldende mores zijn, tot in de allerkleinste details, levensecht en realistisch neergezet.

Amand krijgt steeds vaker te maken met nachtmerries en ontdekt dat hij van zijn wandaden lijkt te hebben genoten. Dit is zo angstaanjagend dat hij bang is om in slaap te vallen. Julienne neemt het op zich om over hem te waken en wekt hem wanneer hij angstig droomt.

Maar dan komen ook overdag de demonen los in Amand. Hij zakt weg in korte perioden van vergetelheid, lijkt hiermee zijn eigen flashbacks te creëren en kan zich er later niets meer van herinneren, ook niet als blijkt dat hij Julienne tijdens zo'n toeval fiks heeft toegetakeld. De sfeer wordt door dit gegeven steeds grimmiger en langzaam maar zeker lijken er toch herinneringen uit zijn verleden op te poppen. Herinneringen die hij maar wat graag wil verifiëren...

Door de herhalingen - ook die van de dagelijkse rituelen - krijgt het verhaal een consequente vertelstructuur. In een bijna flegmatische cadans kabbelt het indrukwekkend voort, geeft steeds iets meer prijs, zoals bij een ui waar iedere keer de buitenste rok af wordt gepeld en langzaam de kern wordt blootgelegd.

Ook al is het verhaal in de derde persoon enkelvoud geschreven, door de lange, voortdurend kronkelende zinnen lijkt het toch verdacht veel op een stream of consiousness, omdat je uitsluitend met Armand in zijn hoofd ronddwaalt. Dit gevoel wordt versterkt door de gewaagde, spannende schrijfstijl - die in het begin heel vreemd aandoet - door de lange, samengestelde zinnen en het veelvuldige gebruik van het woordje 'en'. Daanje begint zelfs de meeste alinea's hiermee. Toch heeft dit een duidelijk effect; je voelt wat hij voelt, wat hij denkt en wat zijn demonen zijn, en hij wordt daardoor psychologisch zeer realistisch uitgediept.

Zoals al vermeld; Fenomenaal! Een boek om te her-, her-, herlezen. Jammer dat het niet in hardcover is uitgevoerd.

Meeslepend en intens. Beeldschoon proza. Een nieuwe klassieker van de toekomst.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Remembered Soldier puts me inside Amand's head for the entire course of the novel. Retrieved from a mental asylum by his wife who has spent years searching for him and still suffering from amnesiac shell shock from the great war, Amand tries to make sense of the world he now finds himself in. Daanje's long, run on sentences, peppered with the conjuction and, show Armand taking in every detail, small and large, and searching for memories.

Initially Amand finds great joy in leaving the asylum. He rediscovers his love for Julienne, he re-learns how to develop prints for their photography studio, and begins to live. Nightmares become frequent occurrences and he begins to have visions of a different life and a different woman.

Amand finds comfort in routine, yet there is unease beneath the surface.

"She picks up the blanket and folds it, you go wash and fetch the coal, she says, and like a well-oiled machine they resume their daily routine, it's soothing, all the chores he could do with his eyes closed, fetching water for her, emptying the ashpan, filling the coal scuttle, lighting the stove, picking up the full bottle of milk from the sidewalk, it's a safe world, this life he shares with her, but beneath it lies a nameless threat, whatever he does, thinks says, it's there in the background, always, as if he glimpses it out of the corner of his eye and it moves again before he can look at it straight on, and the strange thing is somehow his fear always comes as a relief, his love for her was unknown territory, his fear is familiar."

Daanje plays with the ideas of identity and memory. Is one predicated on the other? How absolute are memories and how are they created? How does our identity evolve and how free are we to create a new one?

"he'd imagined one day he'd know everything and not just know, remember, and then he would understand life, he thought a normal person's memory worked that way, but this is it, apparently, this frayed, discolored patchwork full of holes."

Like Amand, I must rely on what Julienne chooses to reveal to begin to put together the puzzle of his past life. Daanje slyly drops hints:

"…and he repeats that he understands and she’s right, but it’s too much, she could have said it once, twice at most, that would have been plenty, and a very hesitant doubt begins to gnaw at him, after all those weeks of loving and surrender she is still hiding something."

As inconsistencies appear, Amand and I both wonder is it the fault of memory? has Julienne left out pieces of the story? or is she lying to him? And if the latter, about what and why?

Daanje slowly builds tension that captures me as bits and pieces of the past are revealed, and Amand and I examine and weigh Julienne's stories. She draws all of these threads together and weaves a very effective and satisfying conclusion.

Now for my niggle. Julienne and Amand have 2 children, Gus and Rose. Now 11 and 8, they make cameo appearances in this tale. I acknowledge that this is Amand and Julienne's story. And yet they are parents. No parents, even in 1922, would go off and leave their children alone so frequently. They barely even get a mention in conversation between our two protagonists. My upset/disbelief here pulled me out of the story on more than one occasion as I read.

When I wasn't stewing over the abandoned, neglected children, I was living in 1922 Kortrijk, Belgium. While primarily a character study, Daanje brings the town to life as well as the battlefields and the trenches.

Let me leave you with one last quote of McKay's thoughtful translation referring to memory:

"And he follows Issie along the river, trying to see his surroundings as if for the first time, but memories keep crowding in of other times he came here with Issie, and really not so much has changed, only his own feeings, and that makes the place different beyond recognition, as if he never before saw the brook and the hills and the fields and the trees as they truly are, only the reflection of his own mood, and he's haunted by the ominous idea that what's true of this landscape is also true of [his wife]."

And finally, thank you Ann. If not for your review, I never would have known this book was out there. And this tender story was a perfect antidote to Roth's American Pastoral.

Publication 2019, Translation 2025

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s going to be hard to beat this reading experience. I’m typically allergic to big books, I avoid them like the plague, but The Remembered Soldier sucked me deep into its depths and captured my attention for the full length of its 600 pages. Seriously, my weekly screen time average was cut in half last week just because of this book.

And surprisingly, it’s a slow book! It’s not a wild ride packed with plot and intrigue, it’s repetitive and filled with run-on sentences that all start with ‘And’. It’s reflective and we’re constantly thinking about what a man is thinking and about what he thinks his wife is thinking and about what he thinks his wife thinks that he is thinking.

I guess I should tell you a little about what it’s about. It’s post WW1 in Flanders and a woman has at long last located her husband, Amand, who went missing during the war. Living in an asylum, Amand has suffered severe memory loss and remembers nothing of her or their life together before the war. And so begins the rebuilding of their life together. But Amand’s constant nightmares and flashbacks give hints at what lies in the deep recesses of his memory and suggest that there may be more to this long awaited reunion than just a simple miracle.

Daanje’s genius is somehow turning this slow, contemplative novel into a page turner. Slow reveals and dropped hints make the reader desperate to know what is really going on. Its repetitiveness and focus on the details, on the day to day mundane routines that make up a life, on the perceptions of the smallest changes that become noticeable when every day is the same, reminded me a bit of On the Calculation of Volume I (just 450 pages longer).

This one gets a big recommend from me!

[Marco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dit boek maakt me zwaarmoedig. En dat maakt het lastig op te pakken. En dat komt ook door de toon, deze blijft egaal en dezelfde, ook bij gebeurtenissen. En en en en. En rond pagina 100 begint de clou door te dringen. En dan is het nog 400 pagina's gaan. En waar is die fiets toch gebleven? En natuurlijk is het knap geschreven: zinnen van meer dan honderd woorden die heerlijk doorkabbelen. En geen leestekens als iemand iets zegt. En de manier van schrijven past ongetwijfeld precies bij geheugenverlies. En de beschrijving van de nachtmerries die overlopen in de werkelijkheid. En ook is de achtergrondkennis over België en de beschrijving van de situatie in Duitsland net na de Eerste Wereldoorlog indrukwekkend. En toch.. En toch is het boek te lang, de talloze malen dat Armand en Julienne zich uitkleden, ontbijten, kolen halen, dat had wel een keertje minder gekund. En het leesplezier wordt allengs minder, totdat helemaal aan het einde een versnelling optreedt. En het boek toch nog leesbaar en enigszins verrassend afloopt.

[lark benobi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s been 2 months since I finished and I feel bad I haven’t written much of a review yet but honestly it left me stunned and speechless. The deep empathy Daanje creates in me for these characters! The way I feel I inhabit them! Really stunning.

[Joachim Stoop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fenomenaal!

Moet ik dan echt alle Nederlandstalige boeken gelezen hebben om te mogen durven stellen dat Anjet Daanje op basis van haar twee dikke turven allicht de allergrootste is of zal worden?

[Katia N]

It has been four years since the end of the WWI. Julienne brings home Amand, the soldier who has lost all his memory at the battlefields of the war. He has spent these four years in a mental asylum. She tells him he is her husband. He has to fully rely on her for the stories of their past. But his memories of the war are starting to come back, initially only through the nightmares. Can he trust her? Can he trust himself? This is the premise.

The whole novel has written from Amand's perspective in a rhythmic incantational style with a lot of ‘ands’ and ‘buts’ between the clauses of long sentences. It took me a bit to settle into it. Initially I’ve found it monotonous. I guess it is written that way partly to juxtapose their routine, the recurrences of their daily life with a sudden and dramatic sparkle in his psyche triggered by a new morsel of information or a memory unexpectedly resurfacing from nowhere. It is quite effective in showing how a small thing could turn the whole story upside down in his head. The style is a bit like Jon Fosse, but not quite that. It is less artistic and more like an oral storytelling.

The novel is mainly focused on the couple dynamics and the trauma, moral ambiguity and the lack of 'good' choices for an individual in a war. It was clear to me from the beginning that their relationship is a titanic searching for an iceberg. But the suspense was in there throughout whether it would sink or eventually swim. The relationship was asymmetric and unbalanced by design. So that was the main driver for turning the pages.

Of course Julienne cannot be totally trusted. And after maybe a quarter of a novel, I’ve started to think of this image in relation to her:



This is Lee Miller having a soak in a bath belonging to Hitler with her dirty boots lying on the ground. They still hold dust from Dachau, a recently liberated concentration camp she has photographed a few hours ago. They’ve just found out that Hitler has killed himself. The photo is taken by her then lover and fellow war photographer. She seems to be relaxed and calm, almost quietly triumphant.

There is something almost obscene but addictive in this image (caught up in the scene, i hardly can move my eyes away). It is as beautiful as it is almost infuriatingly kitschy. Hitler is gazing at her and at us from the photo within the photo. Lee ignores this. She is at the moment of justified and deserved triumph. But it is not going to last. The pain and loss will get her. It is a victory but with huge personal price. She looks vulnerable, shockingly relatable but at the same time little repulsive in that bath.

Lee is still my hero. Julienne would probably never cut this. But It is not surprising this image has melted in my mind with this character. The were a few scenes in the novel with Julienne in bath. The first was more romantic and moving one; and the mood of the last one was like the scene in this photo full of longing mixed with premonition and bitterness. Julienne is a photographer as well. She is ready to use her camera and even her husband to increase the chances of her personal happiness including material prosperity. She does not seem to realise that her means of achieving that happiness might be ethically dubious. Or maybe she does not care.

But also at some stage this book as a whole (not only this character) has started to provoke similar emotions in me: a mixture of mild revulsion with fascination. Susan Sontag said that the photography has made the voyeurs out of us. To an extent, I’ve felt that way while reading this novel. The more I was reading the more I was not sure whether I could trust the author for not turning this story from a psychologically sophisticated study into some kind of a drawn melodrama.

If you think this motive of a soldier loosing his memory during the war has been done many times before, that was I was thinking as well. Relatively recently I’ve read an outstanding complex and also quite hefty novel Amadoka. The one of its plot lines was based on a similar theme. Unfortunately it has not been published in English translation yet. But there is a French and German translation available. Amadoka is much more than a single story. I would call it a deftly executed ‘great Ukrainian novel’ and would recommend it for those who are interested.

But closer to home (WWI in this case), ‘The Return of the Soldier’ by Rebeca West covers a similar territory to “The remembered soldier”. And even more interestingly, there is a novel Johanna at Daybreak written in the 60s. I've just learned about it while checking this theme and haven't read it, but according to the description:

It is a fictional exploration of the events which lead to the discovery of a middle aged woman in a Dutch refugee home, who could not recollect any account of her past, yet trembled at the thought of going to Germany. Her stupefying fear of arrest and trial for a capital offence inspired the authorities and doctors to get down to the root of her mystery. Little by little the truth comes out, half grey reality, half nightmare.

Evidently, there exists an echo between the plots of these books and fates of Joanna and Amand.

However it seems, the author of this novel has found an original perspective by writing the whole book solely through the lens of the unreliable wounded mind of an ex-soldier and deliberately not giving us an access to any other point of view. Amand is constantly trying to put the pieces together about himself and his wife as well. We closely observe how these pieces stuck into a picture in his head to get majestically unstuck in the next few iterations of his otherwise monotonous days. For the biggest part of the novel, this psychology is astutely executed. The best bits has reminded me the novels of D.H. Lawrence. Also it was quite special how she depicted the characters second guessing what the other character would think or do in response to their own utterances and actions. This aspect has created a suspense similar to some novels by Henry James.

Notwithstanding all of this, throughout the duration of this long book I felt as if the author was walking on a tightrope: one step left would push her into the abyss of a melodrama or worse- war pornography; while one step right would push her into a didactic righteousness. And she maintained the balance pretty well. That was the part of the tension for me. But then for the last quarter she hesitated: it seems she did not know when was the time to wind up the whole story. And the last chapter did firmly pushed her off the rope. And it has managed to do it at both directions at once… One nation seems to appear being better than the other; one wife is more loving than other wife(s), etc. I guess the intention was to tight 'the loose ends' and to create some sort of a coda, a general conclusion. I personally did not need it.

This passage for example from this last chapter seems to me totally unnecessary:

and he didn’t know if it had been her plan from the start or if their mutual repugnance gradually made it happen, she didn’t resist, he didn’t use violence, and yet it was rape, except it wasn’t clear who the perpetrator was and who the victim. He used her body to heighten his own disgust with himself, the less he desired her, the more essential it seemed to penetrate her and commit acts of lovelessness and brutality, and she knew that and let him do it, just as she fabricated the deadliest explosives with clean hands and a clear conscience and proud yellow skin.’

A woman in me felt mildly disturbed how it could be unclear who was a perpetrator and who was a victim in ‘a rape’. Then, it wasn’t a rape at that case. Why to present it in such a way? Also I can understand character’s contempt to a woman participating in a war effort of her country and being proud of it. But to make this particular point so blatantly with the woman representing a nation that lost the war (while it was the same situation for the winners as well) seemed a little excessive.

It has been about a week since I’ve finished this novel. So it is too early to say what would stay with me from this book (if anything at all). So far it is still fresh in my memory and I’ve got genially mixed feelings. I believe it would be a story for a screen and will make a great movie. But it seems most likely that when i remember of this novel in future i would see Lee Miller in Hitler’s bath.

[Emiliya Bozhilova · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Bulgarian review is first, the English translation follows it bellow



Спомените са като коварни плаващи пясъци из здрача на паметта. А в любовта всеки много или малко измисля другия и накрая трябва да направи избор какво да остави като истина…

Пет години след края на първата световна война в белгийски приют за ветерани един от тях няма никакъв спомен от фронта, нито от живота си преди това. Докато не става чудо и в отговор на обява във вестника съпругата му не го разпознава и отвежда у дома.

Но случват ли се чак такива чудеса? Къде свършва реалността и къде започва илюзията? Къде започва близостта и къде избледнява кошмарът? Кое изгражда идентичността и самоличността?

Книгата е танго за двама - с него и с нея. Двамата често объркват стъпките и се препъват, но неизменно следват мелодията, често без дори да разберат. Мелодията не винаги е приятна, често е фалшива и скърцаща. Докато внезапно и неочаквано отново прелее в музика.

Тежичък е за четене този своебразен поток на съзнанието в трето лице. Повторенията от един момент нататък ми се понатрупаха и сюжетът зацикли. Щеше да е доста по-добре част от обема да беше отпаднал. Краят върна цялостното звучене и завърши рамката - единствено това ми осмисли прочита, така че ще съм щедра. Но все пак какъв хубав разказ би се получил вместо всички тези страници и страници!

П.П. Странно, че авторката не е превеждана на английски - тя е писала и други любопитни заглавия, които си остават безмълвни на непознатия ми холандски…

———<•> ———<•> ———<•> ———<•> ———
▶️ Цитати:

📸 “…може би човек се нуждае от минало, за да е щастлив…”

📸“…нещо коравосърдечно има в това, сякаш притежанието на фотоапарат и дава право да злоупотребява с ближните си.”

📸“…и е изумен колко лесно е човек да превърне живота си във вдъхновяваща история, в която всеки факт е истина, но тя от начало до край е лъжа.”

📸“…светът изниква зловещо реален, сякаш го е чакал в засада…”

📸“…в книгата можеш да се върнеш назад няколко страници, в мечтата можеш да започнеш всичко отначало, но в реалността изреченото веднъж не може да се отмени.”

Memories are like treacherous quicksand within the twilight of the mind. And in love, everyone more or less invents the other, and in the end, one must make a choice about what to leave behind as the truth…

Five years after the end of the First World War, in a Belgian shelter for veterans, one of them has absolutely no memory of the front, nor of his life before it. That is, until a miracle occurs: in response to a newspaper advertisement, his wife recognizes him and takes him back home.

But do such miracles truly happen? Where does reality end and illusion begin? Where does intimacy start and the nightmare fade away? What is it that constructs identity and selfhood?

The book is a tango for two—with him and with her. The two of them often mistake the steps and stumble, yet they invariably follow the melody, frequently without even realizing it. The melody is not always pleasant; it is often false and grating. Until, suddenly and unexpectedly, it flows into music once more.

This peculiar third-person stream of consciousness is a bit heavy to read. From a certain point onward, the repetitions started piling up on me and the plot stalled. It would have been much better if a portion of the volume had been cut. The ending restored the overall resonance and completed the framework—this alone made the read worthwhile for me, so I will be generous. And yet, what a beautiful short story this would have made instead of all these pages upon pages!

P.S. It is strange that the author has not been translated into English—she has written other intriguing titles that remain silent in a Dutch language unfamiliar to me…

▶️ Quotes:

📸 “…perhaps one needs a past in order to be happy…”

📸“…there is something cold-hearted in this, as if owning a camera gives her the right to exploit her fellow human beings.”

📸“…and he is amazed by how easy it is for a person to turn their life into an inspiring story where every single fact is the truth, yet from beginning to end, it is a lie.”

📸“…the world emerges with sinister reality, as if it had been waiting for him in ambush…”

📸“…in a book you can turn back a few pages, in a dream you can start all over again, but in reality, what has once been spoken cannot be undone.”

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

And she says she never lied to him and, what's more, she means it, and he says keeping quiet is a kind of lying, and she disagrees, she says he's not the only one allowed to forget, and then he gets angry, that stupid envy of his amnesia, what are people thinking, as if the truth is interchangeable, a version of your life you can choose if and when it suits you, she doesn't know the first thing about it, he says, the opposite of truth is not untruth but uncertainty, and if she only knew how awful that is, she wouldn't yearn for it.

 
Winner of the 2026 US and Canada Republic of Consciousness Award for small presses
Finalist for the 2026 Pen Translation Awards
Finalist for the 2025 National Book Award for Translated Literature
 
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize
 
Originally published in 2019 and translated from the Dutch by David McKay.
 
I received this book in our annual Christmas Eve Jólabókaflóðið exchange – but saved it to read on what I correctly anticipated to be its International Booker listing and then made it the last of my reads – as its length and quality of writing made it one to savour.
 
The novel beings in 1922 Flanders in an psychiatric asylum for ex-soldiers.  Noon Merckem (named after the time he was omitted) has lost his memory, found wandering the battlefield (at the place which gave his surname) confused and with no identification.  And the asylum has placed an advertisement trying to trace anyone that knows him – and after a series of women turn up looking for long-lost, missing in action husband’s, one woman Julienne appears and identifies Noon as her husband – an ex-photographer Amand Coppens (whose family died in the war).  And with the very reluctant agreement of the asylum she takes Noon/Amand back to the photography studio in Kortrijk where she lives, in borderline poverty, with her/their two children.
 
And really from there the novel plays out slowly and patiently while Amand tries to re-adopt his old identity and he and Julienne navigate and try to reconstruct their relationship – also slowly but not always patiently as neither Julienne nor Amand find that things are as easy as they might have hoped.
 
And under all this Amand wonders about some apparent inconsistencies or evasions in Julienne’s story, as well as a series of war memories that he finds hard to process and reconcile.
 
And just as the two seem to be effectively building a new marriage – one that it seems is far more physical and uninhibited than their pre-war marriage (which itself was bound up with social class differences) – and starting to make a distinct success of their business (playing on Amand as something of a lucky token for other war widows to pose with) – Amand’s mental condition starts to deteriorate with frequent episodes where he blanks out and acts recklessly or even violently, forcing them both to confront a future in which every memory he has relearnt may disappear again.
 
And the novel is told in a very distinctive style: a close third-person, long run-on sentences, a present tense and the use of “And” to commonly begin paragraphs (and sometimes sentences) – stylistic choices which feel very appropriate for the set up of the novel : just as one example the present tense is often a style I find too frequently used in literary fiction but here I don’t think any other tense would be appropriate.

And there is also extremely extensive use of dream sequences – again normally a no-no for me (my typical tolerance is around 2 maximum) but again hugely appropriate here with the dreams often more of a clue to the past than the present action – not just to us as a reader but even more so to the dreamer – and for from that being artificial it feels completely realistic as Noon/Amand’s unconsciousness tries to untangle muddled memories and images.
 
Overall I thought this was a beautiful novel – truly immersive and really naturally translated.  If it was perhaps a little too long (this I think would have worked better at say 400 pages) the length did allow space for some brilliant explorations – two lengthy sections, one set on the Great War battlefields and the other in hyper-inflation racked Germany. 
 
And further I felt that the space allowed time for the reader’s own contemplation.  For me I reflected on a number of areas: the way in which all deep relationships are effectively a decision to agree on a set of shared memories and stories (the scene in which Julienne and Amand decide to literally agree on which memories they will use post-relapse – and in some cases deliberately create them is another strong point of the novel); the links between Anand’s war-driven amnesia (hopefully vanishingly rare at least in the West today) and resulting angry confusion, and today’s the far more common impact of Alzheimer’s and dementia; and finally the devastating impact of war and they way in which these type of destructive wars which take place at the national level can themselves only take place because nation states (or larger entities) are themselves formed and cemented from a collective decision to agree on a national story.
 
Overall, I would be surprised and disappointed for this not to be shortlisted.
 

And in that instant he sees right through her, how her whole life long she's been reinventing herself, a housemaid in love, a respectable shopkeeper's wife, a heroine waiting for her moment, a Flämische Engel, a widow who experienced a miracle, the realization hits him as if he's opened a door and a cold blast of wind has smacked him in the face, and he looks at her and doesn't know what it means, whether she always lies, or doesn't know herself if she's lying, or whether her lies hew so close to the truth that no one can tell the one from the other, if he and their happy marriage are also part of her lies, if he loves her lies, more than he loves her, and then the moment of insight is over, or of unreason, because he looks at her and he sees Julie, the woman he loves, who loves him unconditionally.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most beautiful, powerful, moving novels I have ever had the pleasure to read. The main character is a WWI veteran who has complete amnesia regarding any aspect of his life before he “awoke” in a mental hospital in Belgium five years after the war ended. He is identified by his wife, a woman named Julienne. She tells him that his name is Amand Coppens and that he was a photographer before the war. She takes him home to live (in poverty) with her and their two children (of whom he remembers nothing) in a small city in Belgium. The novel relates his complicated life with the woman, Julienne, who says she is his wife. In exquisite prose, the reader experiences his nightmares of the war and his confused memories of some aspects of his pre-war life. Julienne explains their life before the war, but he does not fully trust her.
All of Amand’s emotions are on display, and the novel deals vividly with fear, brutality, guilt, trust, lack of trust, love and anger. The storyline revolves around their daily, repeated activities. The repetition of the daily activities is important because those activities, of course, remain constant. Meanwhile Amand’s reaction to them changes almost by the minute. But don’t even those of us who think we are generally mentally healthy respond with different emotions to daily activities and dialog with the ones we love the most?
Amand’s assimilation into postwar life is very slow, with steps forward and backward. The novel details his thoughts, beliefs and confusion in an incredibly tangible way. The reader sees what Armand thinks, what Julienne thinks, and what Armand thinks Julienne thinks.
The novel is created of inconsistencies of memory and the past. These inconsistencies come not only from Armand’s lack of memory, but also from Julienne’s recounting their marital past to Amand. Is he really who she says he is? Are the things she tells him about their life true? There are certainly inconsistencies in her stories of the past – but are they meaningful? It is very clear that Julienne has deep, patient love for Amand. He wants to love her, but guilt and questions about his past life limit his ability to do so.
Beautifully, photography is important to the ambience of the novel. Julienne and Armand run her/his?? photography studio, in which their main business is to photograph war widows with Armand in uniform. Apparently, Armand’s “miraculous” return brings the bereaved women some peace. But of course, Armand cannot specifically remember his days in uniform, and there is even a question about which army (Flemish or German) he fought for. Photography captures past images – but Armand cannot capture his own.
The ending left me completely in awe. I’m still not sure what was real and what was Armand’s confused thinking. But I do know that the power of love was displayed in a way I will never forget.

PS – this is a long novel, and in some ways moves slowly (although in other ways quickly). Read this if you want a beautiful contemplation of the human mind and spirit (but not if you want a quick read).

[Jola · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel by Anjet Daanje was a long (576 pages) and exhausting literary journey, but ultimately one well worth taking. At one point, I almost lost the battle with The Remembered Soldier (2019). Around the halfway mark, I seriously considered a shameful desertion because the book felt too emotionally draining. Fortunately, I persevered.

The premise is hardly original, but Anjet Daanje's execution unequivocally is. A soldier who returns home long after the war inevitably brings to mind The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West, The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis, and Jon Amiel's film Sommersby.

Daanje's book is set in Belgium and Germany in the aftermath of the First World War. It follows a veteran suffering from amnesia. He is brought home from an asylum in Ghent by a woman who recognises him as her long-lost husband. Julienne, Amand and the two children try to rebuild a life together while wartime trauma continually resurfaces. Quiet scenes of domestic life are interwoven with Amand's horrific nightmares filled with the brutality of the trenches. Most novels would end where The Remembered Soldier begins. As it turns out, "happily ever after" can be far more demanding than the heroic quest.

The relationship between Julienne and Amand mirrors my own response to this novel and can be summed up in three words: love and hate. I was impressed by the nuanced and complex psychological portrayals of the characters. Daanje brings you so close to them that it becomes almost uncomfortable—more than once I felt as though I were intruding on their privacy. I also admired the distinctive style and the persistent repetition of "and", which gives the prose an almost hypnotic poetic rhythm, although at times it also felt slightly mannered.

In addition, the post-war atmosphere of Belgium and Germany is recreated brilliantly. You can sense the enormous amount of research behind the novel, yet it never reads like a paraphrased Wikipedia article, something that occasionally happens in historical fiction. Instead, you are completely transported into that world.

I also appreciated the anti-war message, presented with conviction but without slipping into cliché. History textbooks always lie about the numbers of war victims: they count the dead, but they rarely count the families forced to live with the psychological devastation carried home by those who survived. Yet The Remembered Soldier is not just about love and war. Most of all, it's a harrowing story of the search for identity. It thrives on memory, loneliness, displacement, and the dreamlike space between presence and absence.

My biggest complaint is the novel's length. Such relentless emotional intensity and tension over nearly 600 pages felt almost unbearable at times. I also found myself overwhelmed by the many dream sequences. I understood their purpose, but eventually I grew weary of them. Nonetheless, The Remembered Soldier resonated with me profoundly.

I enjoyed the literary associations the book invites. Having watched Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey last Sunday, I was especially hypersensitive (read: slightly obsessed) to the echoes of Homer's epic. There are striking parallels between Amand's return home and Odysseus's, including the faithful dog's recognition of its master. Another literary reference is E.T.A. Hoffmann's (who happens to be one of my most favourite authors ever) The Devil's Elixirs , which is mentioned a few times throughout the book.

I also suspect the characters' names were chosen deliberately. Julienne inevitably recalls Shakespeare's Juliet, Amand evokes the Latin amandus ("worthy of love"), and Käthe made me think of Wuthering Heights. Perhaps I'm overinterpreting (is there a clinical name for an infatuation with names?), but these associations kept returning to me.

I don't think I've ever reacted to a book quite like this: during the last few days I found myself procrastinating over the final chapter because I was anxious that something terrible was going to happen to Julienne and Amand. Somehow, despite everything, I had grown deeply attached to them, even though they occasionally drove me crazy. Childishly, I kept postponing saying goodbye to them. However, once I finally started reading the ending, I couldn't stop. Yesterday I boldly turned the last page of what proved to be a truly unique, challenging, and deeply moving literary experience.


Rafał Olbiński, Somewhere in Time, 1990.

[Boudewijn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Het is in het begin even wennen: met zinnen van soms wel meer dan 100 woorden heb je misschien even de tijd nodig om in het verhaal te komen. Maar gaandeweg merk je dat je door deze schrijfstijl juist een goed beeld krijgt van de stormachtige ontwikkelingen die de hoofdpersoon in dit boek overkomen: na geheugenverlies als gevolg van de trauma’s van de loopgraven, wordt de Vlaamse soldaat Amand Coppens gevonden door zijn vrouw. Hij dient zijn vorig leven - waar hij zich dus niks van herinnert - weer op te nemen.

De relatie met zijn vrouw kent zijn ups en downs, maar op een gegeven moment denkt hij zijn geluk met haar te hebben hervonden. Denkt hij, want de trauma’s komen terug: in de vorm van vele nachtmerries, willekeurige herinneringen die hij zich niet kan plaatsen en momenten waarin hij helemaal van de kaart is. Op een gegeven moment lijkt het erop dat hij een gespleten persoonlijkheid heeft ontwikkeld, waarna de lezer een verrassende plot twist staat te wachten.

Zoals gezegd, het was even wennen, met name de schrijfstijl. Maar dankzij die schrijfstijl blijft de vaart erin. Nergens vervalt het verhaal in een laag tempo waarin alles eindelijk op zijn pootjes terechtkomt. Integendeel, de hoofdpersoon vindt nergens rust en wordt geleefd tussen hoop en vrees. Laat je gewoon meedrijven op de woordenstroom.

Halverwege dit boek begon ik mijn aandacht wat te verliezen. Juist doordat het erop leek dat de hoofdpersoon eindelijk zijn zaakjes op orde begon te krijgen had ik het idee dat de spanning er wat vanaf was. Achteraf ben ik blij dat ik het boek tot het einde heb uitgelezen, anders had ik de grande finale aan het eind gemist.

Update

September 2020: Een leuk interview met de schrijfster (en haar hond Darcy):
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/09/18/...

[Jeroen Decuyper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Noen Merckem, een soldaat met geheugenverlies, is genoemd naar respectievelijk het moment waarop en de vindplaats waar ze hem volledig gedesoriënteerd aangetroffen hebben aan het einde van de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Hij wordt jaren later door Julienne herkend in een psychiatrische instelling en iets later, met wat vertraging, naar huis gebracht. Ze is door het dolle heen dat ze haar vermiste en dood gewaande echtgenoot, jaren na de wapenstilstand, als bij wonder teruggevonden heeft.

Eind goed al goed, denkt een mens dan, maar daarna wachten nog meer dan 400 pagina's. Die vult Anjet Daanje met rake beschrijvingen van nachtmerries, veroorzaakt door posttraumatisch stresssyndroom, romantische scènes, conflicten en verzoeningen. Dit alles in een poging van beide gebroken mensen - en hun twee kinderen - om met vallen en opstaan datgene wat rest van hun leven terug op de rails te krijgen.

En al de rest van het verhaal, daar mag je eigenlijk niets over weten vóór je aan deze verslavende lectuur begint. Daanje haalt ergens aan het einde van het verhaal zelf de reden daarvoor aan: "Bij een boek kun je een paar bladzijden teruggaan, in een droom kun je opnieuw beginnen, maar de werkelijkheid eenmaal gezegd, kan niet ongedaan worden gemaakt."

Het verhaal komt bijzonder traag op gang, tergend langzaam bij momenten, en Daanje start nagenoeg al haar paragrafen met het woordje 'En'. Het is een vreemde gewaarwording, maar het went. En eens je twee derde van de roman achter de kiezen hebt, versnelt het tempo en kan je het boek niet meer aan de kant leggen. Werkelijk alles klopt: de stijl, de plotwendingen, de dromen én het einde.

Een zeldzaam mooi boek.

[John Caleb Grenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE REMEMBERED SOLDIER
@new_vessel_press

Amand Coppens, a Belgian photographer and soldier, has lost his memory in World War I and resides in an asylum in Ghent. Julienne claims she is his wife who has waited, searching for him 8 long years, long after he had been given up for dead, and has finally found him and takes him home against medical advice.

The Remembered Soldier puts the reader directly into Amand’s war-torn psyche, fractured by “shell-shock” far before the diagnosis of PTSD was described.

The novel starts in a beautiful, horrifying situation, proceeds with graceful, slow brushstrokes detailing the cyclic mundanity of postwar Belgium while simultaneously crafting a page-turning mystery—is Amand who Julienne claims? Whose memories are reliable? Can one create them from scratch? The love story here is also, frankly, deeply sexy.

Photography here serves as the fending off of death, the attempt to capture the past and the soul. In a trench-torn landscape, the camera attempts to create and preserve concrete, tangible, irrefutable memory the body and the mind aren’t equipped to do. Fractured and troubled, the human loses himself seeking spacelessness, the void, leaving the body behind to fend on its own without context or orientation.

Photography and memory contrast as acts of pure imaginative creation, art that takes the old world in and forms a new one out.
~
What’s the difference in leaving a life behind in search of a better one and leaving a life behind for the unknown because circumstances deem you must? What is left of the man after the illusion of nationality and civilization are dissolved in the aftermath?

For readers of Solvej Balle, Ron Rash, and Alexis Wright, The Remembered Soldier provides the grounding of historical fiction while still spiraling in explosive, dramatic circles while offering slow meditative daily life with simmering shattered psyches, torn homes, and broken families after senseless war.

This novel has a perfect ending—dwelling in that gray mist where yearning and contentment mingle, where a human experiences the resolute sorrow of losing himself to become the next thing. Are memories comforting? Can they be comforting and haunting—or all they all curse, the lot of being human? What’s better: the trudging knowledge of good and evil; or fatigued, memoriless oblivion?

“…he’s on his way to nothing, leaving nothing behind.” This is an engaging, beautiful masterpiece I won’t soon forget.

More praise
You could just as well rewind the novel, place it in a complete reverse and read the plot back to front and the novel would read just as fascinating, starting at a place of change and ending in another. This novel makes the best case for endings always being new beginnings.

Minor quibble?
I could have used a little more interiority to the children. Children are a very important part of this story, yet they’re left to the wayside of the story as props and proofs. Maybe reflective of the era, but I still think the children’s full perspectives were left too far out of this.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Flanders in 1922, a veteran of the Great War has been living in a psychiatric asylum since 1918. He has complete amnesia. Many women have been holding onto hope that their husbands are still alive. Julienne Coppens visits the asylum and claims he is her husband Amand, a photographer. Against medical advice, she takes him home. The storyline follows the couple’s attempt to rebuild their relationship. Julienne tells Amand about their past, but he is unsure what to believe. He exhibits the symptoms of what we now call PTSD, and they called shell shock, especially recurring nightmares.

The writing style takes some time to get used to, since it is written in long run-on sentences. It is told in a rhythmic fashion, with (I presume) intentional repetition. It is filled with the minutiae of daily life. One of its strengths is its psychological depth. Readers will eventually understand Armand's uncertainty about the truth and there is a late twist which can be interpreted in multiple ways. I read the English translation by David McKay from the original Dutch. It will appeal to those who enjoy books about identity, memory, and the lasting psychological damage of war. It would also make an excellent choice for a book club.

[Anke · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 ⭐️
Even wennen aan de vele ‘en’- zinnen maar erg meegeleefd met het verhaal van Amand en Julie

[Mireille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bijzonder boek. Prachtig ook.
Eerst gaat het over Noen, een naam voor een man die om het middaguur in december 1917 achter het front bij Merckem is gevonden. In 1922 vindt zijn vrouw Julienne hem terug in een Gents gesticht, waar hij woont vanwege geheugenverlies. Niets herinnert hij zich van zijn vroegere leven. Hij, nu Amand geheten, gaat met Julie terug naar Kortrijk om daar zijn leven te hervatten, te hervinden, te herontdekken. En ze worden weer verliefd, hij leert zijn kinderen kennen, en hij pakt zijn fotografieambacht weer op.
Maar toch... vertelt zij alle details wel goed? Weerspiegelen zijn dromen zijn oorlogstijd? Het is lastig om je eigen identiteit te creëren met alleen de brokjes informatie die je her en der voorgeschoteld krijgt.

De schrijfstijl is opmerkelijk. Ik begon aan het verhaal en had pas na een paar bladzijden door dat in de lange zinnen veel "en" staat en dat zelfs bijna elke alinea ermee begint. Toch stoorde het niet, je wordt meegevoerd op een stroom richting het einde. Een einde dat na 538 pagina's overigens 180° anders is dan je verwacht.

Dit boek trok mijn aandacht toen het vanuit het niets op de longlist voor de Libris Literatuurprijs verscheen en het is echt jammer dat het de shortlist niet gehaald heeft.
'De herinnerde soldaat' is zeker niet voor elke lezer weggelegd. Maar een dergelijk verhaal gun je iedereen, al was het maar vanwege de vele details die Anjet Daanje uitgezocht heeft.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okaaaay. A contender for best book I’ve read this year. This does some really interesting things narratively speaking. Fascinating in the way it explores/depicts memory. As a reader, I felt both disoriented and entranced. Fantastic stuff.

[ritareadthat · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's the word on the tip of your tongue, a butterfly that flutters, alighting and then gone. It's a glance across the table, fiery and sharp—after the children have left for school—eyes entrapped with a deep and yearning desire. It's startling awake, unknowing, across the room, naked and in a cold sweat, unaware of yourself and why you are standing here, instead of in bed, from yet another nightmare, and then, almost accidentally, finding arms already encircling you as you elicit awareness, stroking your hair and uttering soothing words into your ear. It's loving someone all over again, for the very first time, despite having already shared an entire life together. Above all else, it's the remembering, the grasping at straws and fragments of images that flash through your mind—and then choosing to follow a path that feels the truest to you right now, despite what you remember. It's about holding on...

...and it's about being rescued. Rescued by her, the "her" that will never give up on you, the "her" that loves you more than the thought of living without you. When you are lost and plummeting, you need an anchor, for without it, you will find yourself sinking. Drowning. Gasping for air. She is the anchor at the end of the rope that you have been fraying apart, one thread at a time—a thread each day—until it was nearly out of your grasp, until she found you. And she held on.

576 pages.
576 pages of ethereal linguistic genius.

That was my attempt to pay homage to this erudite work of literature—this substantially poignant work of word wizardry. These 160,341 words have painstakingly been ensnared with the thoughts and feelings of these two commonplace and unremarkable individuals. These are two flawed creatures who, try as you might, you can't help falling in love with.

Julie has waited for 8 years for him to return. She has never lost hope and has never given up the idea that she will find him—her precious husband, Armand. It is the aftermath of World War I, the year is 1922, in the Flemish region of Flanders in Northern Belgium. Julienne has visited numerous hospitals and asylums in search of Armand, and then, on one inconceivable chance day, she locates the start of the dream she has been longing for...

Bringing Armand home from the asylum is not without its difficulties; he has lost his memories in the war...he doesn't remember owning a photography studio with Julie, he doesn't remember his children, and he doesn't remember his life. All he can recall are ghosts...

What would it be like to experience life again for the first time? But a life that you should already know? Is it filled with wonder and happiness at the rediscovery, or shame, sadness, and confusion at what has been lost and might not ever be reclaimed?

"And they try to find intimacy again, they talk, exchange glances, smile at each other, she rests her hand on his shoulder, he his hand on her back, but every attempt runs aground on a poisonous mixture of inflated intentions, overwrought expectations, and doubts, and, after a while, fresh disappointment and shame. How could it be that before the war they lived a life together, effortlessly, and now, after eight years of waiting, it's there for the taking yet it still eludes their grasp, it must be his fault, maybe a person needs a past to be happy, and there are also times he thinks it must be her, there's something about her, something unnameable."

I hold this book close. I treasured the snapshots of the daily experiences that Julie and Armand shared: her patience at teaching him photography again, the intricacies involved in navigating the ownership of a small business, and the untangling of the roles of husband and wife that revolve around the duties each is best suited for. There is so much joy; but it also comes with a pricetag that insists on the compensation of shed tears, aimless words scattered nearby to hurt, and innumerable nascent misunderstandings. All of this nuanced intimacy that's been meticulously captured in words and glances and hidden smiles, this, this is how I loved with my ex-husband for 20 years with our own photography business. There was too much here that grasped my heart and held on tight.

"...he understands why she loves photography, why he used to love it too, it creates the illusion of complete control, a few square inches of the world in which no disappointment, fear, or sorrow exists."

I would love to dissect all of the intricacies and nuances that effortlessly made this book one of my favorites this year. If I succumb to this desire, I would indubiously ruin it for you, my friends, and that is not what I want for you. You need to experience this magic for the first time, on your own terms, and when finished, then come to me, and we can discuss.

Oh, this book! This book, this book, this book. What a word sorceress Anjet Daanje is! It is so fiery in its intensity, you are left feeling suffocated, unable to breathe, and unabashedly overwhelmed by the depth of it. Indescribable. Have you ever been just exhausted by how undeniably beautiful a book is? Genuine, frank, truthful exhaustion. Every sentence you read is a masterpiece, and you can't help but wonder—how can someone formulate sentences with such power and intent? This book is an existential beauty, deep beyond measure.

A last thought.
Devastation and hope are presenting a unified front within these pages. These two will ambush you and have you questioning your sanity as you step amongst the land mines. Just remember—find your way home.

[Matthew Ted]

I've seen many people reference this as the best book they've read in years, decades, even, but I'm throwing in the towel at p.237. The beginning is beautiful, sad, and the long, looping sentences had a rhythm I could tap into. But quickly the book descends into a horrible mundane repetitiveness. On nearly every page they make love, they fight and reconcile, they retouch photographs, they go for a walk, they fight, they make love again. Every night Amand has a bad dream and wakes thrashing. It feels endless. The prose begins to grate, when you're reading the same, long, multi clause sentences about the same few events. Most reviewers claim they could hardly put this down, I could hardly bring myself to keep picking it up. I am trying to give up on books more. In the past, as far in as 237 pages, I'd think, Well, I might as well get to the end... But another 300 pages is not worth the effort. Life is too short. I'll probably still try her book on Emily Bronte coming out later this year.

[Liz Hein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shoutout to everyone that put this on their best of 2025 lists, making me finally pick it up. This was SO GOOD. I am hypnotized and would like to read it again.

[Brock · Rating 3 out of 5]

What is identity but a frenzied assortment of memories, relationships, and supposed truths we convince ourselves of? Dutch writer Anjet Daanje’s "The Remembered Soldier" delivers a romantic psychological puzzle that explores the limits of shattered personhood and keeps readers guessing until the final page. After receiving several top literary prizes in her native Netherlands, this is the first of Daanje’s novels to be translated into English. Set in post-war Kortrijk, Belgium, the narrative follows Amand Coppens, an amnesiac World War I veteran on a desperate search for identity.

While living in a psychiatric asylum, Amand is found by a woman named Julienne, who is determined to rehabilitate her missing husband and restore his memory. She brings Amand home, introduces him to their two young children born before his mobilization, and together they begin an arduous journey to rebuild their past life. Like many wounded World War I soldiers, Amand’s fight continues beyond the battlefield as he suffers from post-traumatic retrograde amnesia, erasing nearly all of his memories and triggering macabre nightmares.

Over the next year, Julienne reintroduces Amand to his home, photography shop, and attempts to rekindle their severely disrupted marriage. Unsure whether to faithfully trust her descriptions of his past, but unable to conjure up accounts of his own, Amand struggles to find any ground to stand on: “it surprises him how easily his life can be reshaped into an inspiring story, correct in every factual detail, yet a lie from beginning to end.” Midway through their attempt at a second chance at love, Amand suddenly regresses and begins to adopt the personality and memories of another soldier named Louis. This kicks off a frenzy of conflicting recollections, leading to a furious final chapter that brings closure to an eight-year nightmare that began on the warfront.

At times, Daanje successfully immerses readers in a psychological labyrinth of spurious accounts and shifting perspectives, but large portions of the novel feel narratively jumbled and repetitive. Nearly every argumentative scene includes the recurring statement that they “made love,” as if it's a perfunctory act that follows every traumatic dispute in their relationship. In fact, Amand and Julienne’s dynamic is so one-note and cyclical that even their most heartfelt moments and passionate expressions lose emotional impact.

Offering a steady dose of suspense, "The Remembered Soldier" succeeds in plot but stumbles in execution. Daanje’s omission of standard punctuation and use of third-person narration tends to drag readers along rather than immerse them in a seamless stream of thought and dialogue. However, patient readers are rewarded with a riveting conclusion that ties together the previously disparate threads.

[Sien · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5 * Vroeger, toen ik nog geen verplichtingen had en ik verslaafd was aan boeken, toen las ik bijna alles wat met de oorlog te maken had. Tot op het punt dat er geen schrapnel, geen loopgraaf en geen niemandsland meer bij kon in mijn hoofd. 20 jaren later stond De herinnerde soldaat stond niet meteen op 1 op mijn to-read lijst, maar door Het lied van ooievaar en dromedaris wou ik het toch een kans geven.

Content van? Niet normaal. Het verhaal vertrekt vanuit Juliette die na vijf jaar zoeken haar man met geheugenverlies terugvindt in het gesticht in Gent. Het is niet gemakkelijk, het tergt iedereens zenuwen en is het is moeilijk. En zo leest het verhaal ook. Het is een uitzonderlijk boek dat mij op het spectrum van plezier naar de uitersten drijft. Het is vaak enerverend, lang en draait rond. Maar het is ook slim, gevoelig, genuanceerd, interessant en op een rare manier ook spannend.

Wat ik nu het meest speciaal vind is de manier hoe Anjet, een Nederlandse schrijfster, er echt in slaagt om een West-Vlaamse achtergrond te schetsen die voor mij heel erg klopt. Ze vertelt in een Youtube filmpje hoe ze alles heel precies heeft geresearcht, tot het rooten van het vlas in de Leie in de zomer en de stank die dat toen veroorzaakte toe. Zonder de pretentie te hebben dat ze daar woont, snap je? Jeetje, die vrouw kan schrijven.

Ik heb gelezen over schrapnels, loopgraven en niemandsland. Het bracht mij terug naar mijn tijd als leesverslaafde en ik denk dat ik er terug klaar voor ben.

[Ivana Balnožan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish this book never ended 🧡

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Echt een intense en pijnlijke maar prachtige leeservaring. Wie ben je nog als je niet meer weet wie je bent en waar je vandaan komt? Identiteit, trauma, psyche, liefde en haat, vertrouwen en wantrouwen, niet alleen ten opzichte van jezelf maar ook van je omgeving. En dan de manier waarop het geschreven is: inderdaad het gros van de alinea's en zinnen begint met 'en', even wennen, maar zo meeslepend. Alsof het leven van Noen/Amand/Louis zelf ver van hem af staat, omdat hij zijn leven wel meemaakt, maar bij alles twijfelt wat echt is en wat niet. En dan heb ik het nog niet gehad over de historie in het verhaal, en tegelijkertijd het alledaagse van het leven van Amand en Julienne: het boek omvat te veel om hier aan te geven, lees hem zelf!

[Dax · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written mind-bender. I loved the unique perspective switch part way through the book, and the final pages are moving and the imagery Daanje creates are long-lasting. I continue to think about Louis' departure and goodbye to Issie and will continue to do so for quite sometime I'm sure.

New Vessel is one of the best indie presses going today. I discovered this one thanks to Lori Feathers and her staff at Interabang Books in Dallas. If you appreciate hidden gems from small independent presses, I would recommend following Feathers’ literary prize that she founded a few years ago, the Republic of Consciousness Prize US/Canada. Daanje's novel won the prize for 2026 (calendar year 2025).

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally written in Dutch, this longlisted International Booker Prize novel is a slow-moving, atmospheric story that really asks you to settle in and savor it.

Set in post–World War I Flanders, we meet a soldier known only as Noon, named for the time he was found. He suffers from shell shock and complete amnesia. He’s spent four years in a mental asylum with no memory of who he is. When a woman named Julienne arrives claiming he’s her missing husband Amand, she convinces the doctors to let her take him home. From there, things quietly unravel: is she telling the truth, or building a life out of something she needs to believe?

Much of the story lives in their day-to-day existence as Julienne reconstructs their supposed past. They scrape by running a small photography business while Noon is haunted by fragmented memories and nightmares. He has two children that he has a hard time bonding with. The writing has a hypnotic, almost dreamlike quality, circling around themes of identity, memory, and truth. The structure is distinctive too—most of the sentences begin with “And,” which at first feels lyrical and connective, though over time it started to wear on me a bit.

At its best, the novel explores vulnerability after war and the human need for stability—even if that means bending the truth. There’s something about Julienne’s desperation paired with Noon’s reliance on her that made their dynamic a bit unsettling, especially in the awkward forced intimacy between them.

That said, this is a very slow burn. Around the halfway mark, I started to lose interest as the repetition became more draining than immersive, and the characters felt a little distant. But the final stretch pulled me back in just when I was close to giving up. The quality of the ending was absolutely amazing!

There’s a lot to admire in this novel—the structure, the atmosphere, the questions it raises. It’s a fascinating story, and at times a beautiful one.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Winner of the 2025 Republic of Consciousness Prize, United States and Canada
2026 PEN Translation Prize finalist
2025 National Book Award for Translated Literature finalist
Longlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize in the UK
Longslisted for the 2026 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation

The Remembered Soldier is David McKay's translation of De herinnerde soldaat by Anjet Daanje.

In the US the novel was published by New Vessel Press - see below - and was their successfully shortlisted entry for Republic of Consciousness Prize for small independent presses.

The story draws on stories of WW1 soldiers with PTSD-induced amnesia, as well as those desparate to rediscover their lost loved ones, notably the case of Anthelme Mangin, as well as explicit references to E.T.A. Hoffman's Die Elixiere des Teufels.

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, as the hope that sustained him, the certainty that everything would be new and better beyond imagining and normal at last, that he would pass through that everyday door and be another man when he came out, a man with a home and a family and a life outside these walls, all drains away.

As the awards above and the reviews on the site confirm, this is a highly accomplished novel, and it succeeds in its pyschological portrayal of the characters, although rather too drawn out for my taste.

New Vessel Press

New Vessel Press is an independent publishing house based in New York City and specializing in fiction and narrative nonfiction in translation.

Since we began publishing in 2013, New Vessel Press books have won a National Book Award, the National Translation Prize, a National Jewish Book Award, and been longlisted for the International Booker Prize as well as garnering accolades in publications from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to The New Yorker and O, The Oprah Magazine.

In bringing books from other countries to English-speaking readers, we offer captivating, thought-provoking works with beautifully-designed covers and high production values. We scour the globe looking for the best stories, knowing that only a fraction of the books published in the United States each year are translations. That leaves a lot of great literature still to be discovered.

At New Vessel Press, we believe that knowledge of a multitude of cultures and literatures enriches our lives by offering passageways to understand and embrace the world. We also regard literary translation as both craft and art, enabling us to traverse borders and open minds. We are committed to books that offer erudition and enjoyment, that stimulate and scintillate, that transform and transport.

And of course, what matters most is not where the authors hail from, or what language they write in. The most important thing is the quality of the work itself. And hence our name. We publish great books, just in a new vessel. We look forward to bringing the world’s great literature to ever more readers.

International Booker Prize judges' citation

‘A soldier without his memory; a wife in search of her missing husband – if you thought that all war stories were the same, not so. Some years after the Great War, Noon Merckem is found wandering in a field in Belgium, amnesiac and adrift. In time, he is claimed, but it is not so easy to return to an elusive past. In Daanje’s hands, and in McKay’s intuitive translation, the ravages and shellshock of the First World War are superbly traced – but the big question at the heart of this novel is how far humans will go in order to love, how fiercely they will fight for what they intend to have and to hold.’