The Latest Breaking News from Van der Wouden

More sex please, we’re bookish: the rise of the x-rated novel

From the Women’s prize to the bestseller lists, authors are pushing the boundaries of how explicit the novel can be – and readers can’t get enough

The Guardian - UK · Jul 26, 2025

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden wins the 2025 Women’s prize – an expertly woven tale of personal crises and national horror

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden has won the 2025 Women’s prize. It revisits a dark, under-explored chapter of Dutch history. It asks what happened to all the possessions that Jews who were forced to flee or were taken to camps during the second world war had to leave…

The Conversation · Jun 16, 2025

Women’s prize winner Yael van der Wouden: ‘It’s heartbreaking to see so much hatred towards queer people’

The winner of this year’s fiction prize on growing up as an outsider, why we’re all guilty of complicity, and using her acceptance speech to reveal that she is intersex

The Guardian - UK · Jun 13, 2025

Women’s prize for fiction goes to debut novelist Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep

Nonfiction award goes to Rachel Clarke’s ‘beautiful and compassionate’ The Story of a Heart, about a lifesaving transplant seen from all sides

The Guardian - UK · Jun 12, 2025

Debut novel by Dutch author wins 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction

Yael van der Wouden won the award for her novel, The Safekeep, which explores repressed desire and the unresolved aftermath of the Holocaust.

Evening Standard · Jun 12, 2025

Intrigue, desire … and awful landlords: why queer authors are suddenly writing about houses

A settled domestic life can seem like a pipe dream for some LGBTQ+ writers, especially in the midst of a housing crisis. Yet novelists such as Booker nominated Yael van der Wouden are finding that inspiration begins at home

The Guardian - UK · Sep 16, 2024

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden review – secrets and sex in postwar Europe

This remarkable debut novel explores the Netherlands’ failure to reckon with the fate of Dutch Jews alongside one woman’s reckoning with herself

The Guardian - UK · Jun 16, 2024

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden review – the Dutch house

An outsider shatters the quiet domestic life of a lonely young woman in this thrilling debut set in post Nazi-era Netherlands

The Guardian - UK · May 25, 2024