The Remembered Soldier

Set in the aftermath of the First World War, this is an extraordinary love story 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 recognises Noon as her husband, the photographer Amand Coppens, and takes him home against medical advice.

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 Amand be certain that Julienne is telling the truth? When he comes to doubt her word, the reader is caught up in a riveting spiral of confusion.

In The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje immerses us in the psyche of a war-traumatised man who has lost his identity. The book was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026.