Dutch-Israeli author Yael van der Wouden shortlisted for Booker Prize
Novelist inspired by her frustration as a Jewish woman growing up in the Netherlands feeling like her culture has disappeared
An Israeli-Dutch woman was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction for 2024 on Monday, part of a group of authors featuring the largest number of women in the prestigious literary award’s 55-year history.
Yael van der Wouden was among five women and one man in the running for the prize, from a longlist of 13 authors. The shortlisted authors also include writers from Australia, Britain, Canada and the US.
Van der Wouden, who was born in Tel Aviv to a Jewish mother and non-Jewish Dutch father and grew up in the Netherlands, was shortlisted for her debut novel, “The Safekeep,” a family drama set in the Netherlands 15 years after the end of World War II.
Speaking about her inspiration for her novel, van der Wouden told the Pages of Julia blog earlier this year that her frustration as a Jewish woman growing up in the Netherlands was a large part of her motivation for the novel.
“I spent a lot of my 20s in a turmoil of frustration and anger around how nonexistent Jewish heritage is in the Netherlands. It’s been cannibalized, taken apart and consumed by mainstream Dutch culture. There’s a lot of Yiddish in Dutch, which is very confusing when no one is Jewish but everyone says words you understand,” she said.
“There were traces. Empty synagogues, houses with David stars on them but no one lives there anymore… it’s as if – no, it is that an entire community of people has just disappeared overnight. And no one ever asked where they went.”
Yael van der Wouden's extraordinary debut sees tensions between two women reach boiling point over the course of a sweltering summer. She visited Waterstones Piccadilly to tell us more about her debut and three other novels that inspired it.
The Safekeep: https://t.co/Kck4xtVvE2 pic.twitter.com/a6fqkg6Qsl
— Waterstones (@Waterstones) July 2, 2024
Van der Wouden said that in the Netherlands, it is common for Jewish youth not to know they are Jewish until they reach their mid-20s and their grandparents start talking about their experiences during the Holocaust.
She also said she was frustrated by the discourse around Jews in the Netherlands, which focuses mainly on those who were killed in the Holocaust and the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“It’s never about the present, the people who live here and how we are a part of society,” she said. “When you talk about somebody only in the context of them not being there, you’re emphasizing that they don’t belong in your midst.”
Her novel, she said, came from a desire for a step forward from the Holocaust that made sense to her because apology and recognition for the part the Dutch played in the Holocaust didn’t feel like enough.
“What I wanted for these characters is for them to find the next step, which I believe is desire. Desire to have the other person around. Desire to have the other person stay. The other side of the coin,” she said, explaining how the dynamic plays out between her two main characters, non-Jewish Isabel and Jewish Eva.
Speaking about their selection of “The Safekeep” for the Booker Prize shortlist, the judges said, “We loved this debut novel for its remarkable inhabitation of obsession. It navigates an emotional landscape of loss and return in an unforgettable way.”
English pottery-maker, author and chair of the judges Edmund de Waal said the shortlist comprised “books that made us want to keep on reading, to ring up friends and tell them about them, novels that inspired us to write, to score music, and even – in my case – to go back to my wheel and make pots.”
The other novels on the shortlist include a spy novel, “Creation Lake,” by American Rachel Kushner, who was shortlisted in 2018 as well; International Space Station story “Orbital” by British author Samantha Harvey, previously longlisted in 2009; “James” by American writer Percival Everett; “Held” by Canadian author Anne Michaels; and Australian Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional.”
The Booker is open to works of fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between October 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024.
The Booker Prize ceremony will take place on November 12. Each of the shortlisted authors will receive £2,500, and the winner will get £50,000.
Last year’s winner was Irish author Paul Lynch and his dystopian novel “Prophet Song.”
