Set in Flanders in 1922, this moving novel explores the power of memory, identity, and imagination. After fighting in the First World War, a soldier named Noon Merckem has lost his memory and is living in a psychiatric asylum. Many women visit the asylum in response to a newspaper advertisement, hoping that the unidentified patient might be their missing husband. One day a woman named Julienne arrives and claims that Noon is actually her husband, the photographer Amand Coppens. Despite medical advice, she takes him home. However, their reunion is not as perfect as she presents it to others. Gradually, the two begin to grow closer as Julienne reconstructs Amand’s past through her stories. Yet doubts arise—how can he know whether her version of his life is true? In The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje delves into the troubled mind of a war-traumatized man searching for his identity, drawing the reader into a powerful and unsettling exploration of memory and truth.
Anjet Daanje, the pen name of Anjet den Boer, was born in 1965. She writes novels, short stories, and screenplays. Her novel The Remembered Soldier has received several major literary awards in the Netherlands, including the 2020 F. Bordewijk Prize and the Best Book of Groningen Prize, and it was also longlisted for the 2020 Libris Literature Prize
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