Latest news with #Women'sPrizeforFiction
Hindustan Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Yael van der Wouden: 'History also serves as an unfinished thought'
On winning the Women's Prize for Fiction, you note how you stand on the shoulders of queer and trans people before you. Please share the significance of the prize for you? Author Yael van der Wouden (Courtesy It's a huge honour, first and foremost. The word 'woman' as a possessive for me hasn't always been a straightforward one, but my love for stories always has, as has my appreciation for platforms that elevate stories written from the margins. Being acknowledged in this way and read so kindly by the judges — and by so many people — has been a gift, and fully unreal. I've been reading along with the lists for years and can hardly believe I have a little Bessy [the bronze statuette] living in my house now. The other day, I caught a glimpse of my new paperback cover on the counter, and now it has the green circle and the word 'winner' on it. I had my first true, 'Oh my God' moment where the realisation briefly hit home. And then it was gone, and I went back to peeling ginger. 272pp, ₹799; Viking The Safekeep asks readers to reconsider what they own, and discusses people's possessiveness about objects and land. It also raises a wider question about the idea of theft. Were you deliberately invoking these propositions, or did it happen as the story progressed? I come from both a European Jewish heritage and a non-Jewish, Dutch heritage. I have grandparents who fled the war, and grandparents who had to live through the German occupation. I grew up in Israel/Palestine, in a city shaped by colonialism and built on the remnants of destroyed Palestinian villages that go unnamed and unremembered in contemporary Israeli memory. The question of choices made in war, of theft and of land and how people dealt with those choices after all was said and done, is a question that sits at the core of who I am, my position in history. I've been wanting to write something about that for a long time, and for a while, I figured that something would probably end up being an essay or a long read. The idea for the novel came to me almost as a surprise! But once it did, and once I saw the scope of it play out in my mind, the writing became almost compulsive. It's a conversation I'm having with myself, a meditation on homes, on desire, on who benefits from apologies — the person apologising, or the one who is there to receive? Reading The Safekeep, I couldn't help but think of the connections Olivia Laing makes in The Garden Against Time between gardens and post-war real-life stories. Then, I read your essay, On (Not) Reading Anne Frank, where you mention reading Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. The consumption of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden explains humans' origins in many cultures. There's, however, something unmistakably erotic about that act. Gardens are also private little paradises where a lot of pivotal scenes in your novel are set, alongside the unabashed, unapologetic eating of the fruit, with its core and all. Am I making puzzling connections here, or were gardens and erotica on your mind, too, while working on this book? Oh, you're absolutely not making puzzling connections here — that's as bang on the money as it gets. My background in academics was a niche within a niche: in Comparative Literature, I was doing Memory Studies, and within that, Landscape Studies. That's a very complicated way of saying: I was writing about and looking at the ways national identity-making and memory-making define the way we shape our environment. One of my favourite lectures to give was one on the history of the suburban lawn, where we trace the path of a lawn from being a symbol of wealth (consider the renaissance Venetian garden, and compare it to your run-of-the-mill monastic garden: the former says, 'I have all this land, and I don't even need to use it for the production of food, that's how wealthy I am!', and the latter says, 'I'll use every piece of this garden to feed and maintain my community'), and how a patch of grass — a plant kept in infancy by its continuous mowing, so it's never allowed to grow into maturity or procreate — has therein become a marker of control—of nature, of wealth. Run that through the mill of industrialism and the making of the suburban city, the creation of the individual under capitalism, and what you end up with is the middle-class home with its small square of well-kept grass to tell the neighbours: I too have money, I too am in control. And yet nature pushes back: continuous weeds to pull out, the roots that grow too deep and the seeds that spread too quickly. The garden is nature's glorious excess, and our relationship to it is one of restraint, of nipping the one to allow the other. There's something compulsive and almost fetishistic in that, isn't there? Certainly, a kind of eroticism in the pretending that we do when we keep a garden, the same theatre of control that we apply to bodies, to desire. In leveraging the diary Eva maintains to further the story, were you trying to invoke the most popular historical record of WWII, the diary of Anne Frank? Eva's recollections are markedly different, for they're not manipulated by hope but document what the diarist has been robbed of; entries are almost tainted by a feeling of revenge. Then, there's your history with Frank, when, looking at you, children in school chanted Anne Frank! so much that the 'nickname stuck'. Initially, when I started writing the novel, I didn't mean for it to have a diary chapter at all! I knew that there needed to come a moment of reveal for Eva, where we find out her true thoughts and desires and how she ended up at the house. My first idea of how to do that was very convoluted and involved a set of initials and an aunt and a trip to the local library — things that bored me just thinking about having to write them. So, I put them out of my mind and began writing the first chapters, figuring that I'd solve that piece of the puzzle when I got there. I realised in that process that Eva had a book with her, and that book was there so that she could take note of certain things and not use it much else, which is how I wrote that at first. The diary solution was a sudden one and one that I definitely struggled with for a few whiny days — I didn't want to take that route, worried I was going to fall into a gimmicky trap, worried indeed over the Anne Frank associations! I wanted to move away from conventional war narratives in many ways (another thread I desperately wanted to avoid: most war stories tend to focus on middle-class and wealthy families, because those are the families that tended to be able to afford the cost of hiding in someone's attic. Those are the ones who more often survived, because there was a delay in how long it took for them to get deported. There's a whole class element to who survived the camps that I rarely see spoken of, and I wanted that woven into the novel so badly … and simply couldn't make it work within the plot). What became clear, though, was that there was my will and then there was the story's desire towards the path of least resistance — a clean, neat story where no one ever leaves the house, and all the explanations needed are there already. In the end, Eva's diary chapter ended up being my favourite chapter to write. I wrote the first half on the six-hour train ride to Berlin, and the second on the return. It was such a relief to get to cast off Isabel's restrictive narrative voice, but especially to get to do it all in the form of a grand reveal. Much of it was cathartic: after a hundred pages of not-knowing, to get to kick down the door and scream out everything that's been happening below the surface. It scratched an itch I often have when in conversation with non-Jewish Dutch people, when the war comes up: this desire to shout, 'You don't even know what you don't know!' The choosing of what went in and what would go was a more collected, restrained exercise; a lot of the research didn't make it in, and I had to be careful and make sure that it still sounded like a diary, not a mouthpiece for academic research — a list of facts. When I sent it in to my editors for a first round of edits, I was sure she'd say that half of it had to go. Surprisingly, they both said: more of this chapter, more of Eva's voice. Great news for me, of course, I had plenty more to say! One of the most satisfying experiences of reading The Safekeep was its deliberate suppression of the characters' train of thought, as if verbalising what's on their minds would give finality, a real shape to their thoughts. Interestingly, as these words hung in the air, someone else would pick them up and carry the conversation forward, as if a co-creation of something mutually thought was being signalled. In the incompleteness of the dialogues, you perhaps wanted to test the thresholds these people could cross or wanted to respect. In that sense, could you reflect on the dialogue writing in the book? The primary rule with Isabel was — she cannot have access. Not to her thoughts, her desires, her feelings. When she feels anything at all, she starts pinching at herself; when she feels desire, she redirects it into anger. When she thinks something that in any way goes deeper than an inch below the surface, she cuts herself off. The moment Isabel has access to herself, that's when we, as her audience, can stop wondering why she is the way she is — and the tension is broken. Isabel herself believes she knows herself, and that fantasy is only maintained as long as she doesn't dig too deep. So much of the novel was writing out bits of dialogue or thoughts and then backspacing them out of existence immediately because 'Isabel would not know this about herself.' I wanted the unfinished nature of thoughts and dialogue to mimic also what it feels like to exist in an environment where history also serves as an unfinished thought. READ MORE: Review: The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden Finally, in celebrating the fierce fire-like desire of a bodily want, you note multiple times that a body doesn't exist unless it's forced into being in the moment during an act of love. While same-sex desires have been considered deviant, there's something utterly mechanical but also philosophical about the love between Isabel and Eva that you describe in the book. To me, so much of that has to do with the body as it's seen and unseen. Both Isabel and Eva enter into the narrative furious with how the world perceives them — they feel utterly invisible in their true form, and only visible as a projection. Isabel is seen by her brothers as an extension of their mother; Eva is seen by her lovers as a mirror image of whatever they want her to be. Neither woman is considered in full until they are pitted against each other. And what they see, at first, is something ugly. Both women despise one another, but there's at least the relief of being despised for who you are, rather than loved for who you're not. The physicality of their desire becomes an extension of that: the body responds to being perceived, especially through Isabel's perspective, which is so deeply tactile. From the very first page, you see how intensely she experiences the world. Everything is vibrant and green, and every smell is overpowering, and every sound is too loud. A breeze could knock the poor woman over! She exists in her body, and the body overwhelms her. The physicality she finds with Eva is both about truth and perception, and it's also about channelling the very tactile way she exists in the world into something physical — touch. Saurabh Sharma is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. They can be found on Instagram/X: @writerly_life.
Hindustan Times
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Sophie Mackintosh: 'I never really set out to write a feminist book'
Your novel Cursed Bread was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. How did you learn about the mass-poisoning incident that is the subject of the novel? Author Sophie Mackintosh (Saurabh Sharma) I stumbled across it online. And I remember just thinking it was such an interesting story, so I just filed it away in my head. But I kept thinking of it. I think it was something about the idea of a mass poisoning — in the sense how quickly a town could just tip over from one state to another and how it affected everyone. There's something very terrifying about it and kind of primal, too. While a really good straightforward non-fiction book could've been written about it, and there has been stuff about it, I didn't feel like I was the right person to tell that story. I liked the freedom of the fiction form. The town is not even mentioned by name in the book. It kind of becomes [the story of] any town but it's still the story of the town if that makes sense. With fiction, I was free to interpret it in a way that was more about the relationships and the dynamics [people share], focusing on the elements that I wanted to explore, say, how quickly things can change, about the violence under the surface. Fiction gave me more freedom essentially to do what I was interested in doing. 240pp, ₹559; Hamish Hamilton Ltd The opening sentences of the book signal a deep suspicion of the nature of reality, as from the get-go the book questions if an incident of the sort actually happened. Were you shining a light on the politics of remembering in the reconstruction of the incident? How challenging was it to depict this duality in the narration? I wanted to signal the unreliability of the narrator immediately because so much of the book is about memory and desire. I think about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and also about the script of our life. So, Elodie [the baker's wife] is basically living in a fantasy and she's living in memories and they become almost more real than real life. I wanted to signal that sense that she is very much slipping between these worlds, between these [different] modes and [perhaps] we can't really trust her. She can spin us a good story but she's only telling us one part of it, right? I think it's really interesting that the narrative provides the possibility of remembering and misremembering. There's a lot stylistically in the book in terms of repetition and stuff. And some reviewers have said that the book is a bit repetitive. That was done on purpose because I wanted it to give the sense of ruminating, going over and over and over something because you never remember anything the same way. You're always slightly misremembering, which changes the story each time. So, Elodie's memory is not the same memory that she originally had. Even though I was confronted by all the ways that this story could be told, it just felt a bit overwhelming for me. However, this ruminative effect was something that was really important for me. Interestingly, all your books have this distinct style. Tell me a bit more about the playfulness of your writing style. According to GauZ' this is very basic to storytelling. I suppose we all, as writers, have these things which are really precious to us. Things that we really treasure in our own writing or things that are our trademark. I would agree with GauZ' here: style is fundamental. I love style. I feel like I put style at the forefront of my stories too. I like to keep it a bit spare though, but with style, I try to bring about a distinct texture. Maybe it's just texture then? I like writing that has these textures. I like something that feels tactile and also something that feels very immersive. I feel like I'm always trying to find a balance between writing in a way that's overwritten and writing that's too sparse. But I'm very precise about how I do my sentences at the end. They've been refined a lot. So maybe precision? I don't know. It's not really pretentious, I think. [Laughs.] You're right, the sentences are really chiselled. They say a lot but still conceal something. How do you strike a balance between repetition and sharp writing? I think there's ambiguity there as well. Again, like you say, there is a lot left unsaid, too, in the story. I'm very interested in what we can leave out to let the reader fill in the gaps a little bit. It's nothing but just trusting the reader really. I feel like it's a collaborative effort when you're reading. You're having a bit of an adventure together. There have been several narratives like the Blue Ticket – a dystopian world, policing of women and their sexuality, how they are treated and mistreated just because of their ability to reproduce. I was wondering what sort of literature may have inspired it. Is Margaret Atwood an influence on your writing? I never really set out to write a feminist book or even specifically focus on women's stories. I think it was just the things that interested me and things I was thinking about. So, with The Water Cure, it was sisterhood, but then you have these patriarchal elements, too. With Blue Ticket, my second one, I was thinking about having a baby. So, I thought that I'm going to explore this in a larger social way but also a very weird way. I guess Cursed Bread was the one where it's kind of [based on a] true event. But still, I was like, oh, I'm drawn to desire and the idea of its role in this specific time. I guess I am very much interested in [exploring] the power of desire. And it manifests in different ways, something like female desire especially because it's often pathologized or is seen as something gentle or non-existent. And I'm like, no, it's ferocious and it'd be great to think about it as more like a propelling force. 304pp, ₹546; Doubleday About the hero-worshipping of literary giants like McCarthy or Neil Gaiman – you may have read the Vanity Fair piece on how McCarthy exploited and appropriated Augusta Britt's real life. You've also written a piece on McCarthy. There are also allegations about Gaiman. What do you think of them now? I don't want to support the work of someone who has done quite monstrous or bad things. I don't find it difficult to approach it objectively at all. In the UK, at the moment, you have a lot of very transphobic writers and journalists. In no way do I want to support them. I can't separate the artists from their work because it's like, well, how do we separate ourselves from the work? It's what we do as well. Maybe that's just something I feel. This is your first time in India and being here at the Kerala Literature Festival. What sort of similarities and differences have you noted between Indian and English literature festivals? It has been great being in India. And I think here versus in the UK, it feels more democratic. There are so many people coming to the talks, and it's much more accessible. I really loved seeing a lot of young people and school children attending the festival. This is something that we really don't get to witness in the UK, which is a shame. I wish we had something more like the literary festivals in India. Then, I think the array of topics has been broad and some interesting topics were platformed, too. The diversity here actually reflects that no one is afraid to shy away from difficult subjects. Not that we are in the UK either, but I think there were some really interesting discussions here on the legacy of colonialism, for example. Saurabh Sharma is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. They can be found on Instagram/X: @writerly_life.
Indian Express
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Against the narrowing definition of womanhood
It takes courage to write — especially stories that challenge the status quo. It takes even more courage to stand on a global platform and speak your truth. When Dutch author Yael van der Wouden stepped up to accept the Women's Prize for Fiction on a balmy June night in London, she demonstrated bravery in spades. 'Please be gentle and kind,' she murmured, bracing for her audience's reaction, before coming out as intersex. That she had to make the plea at all is the real indictment. 'I was a girl until I turned 13,' she told the 800 people gathered. 'And then, as I hit puberty, all that was supposed to happen did not quite happen. And if it did happen, it happened too much. And all at once, my girlhood became an uncertain fact… hormonally, I am intersex.' She need not have worried about how her revelation would be received. The cheer that followed was louder than the one that greeted her name. In that moment, van der Wouden, who had just been awarded a prize that celebrates 'women's voices,' redefined what the term could mean. 'In the few precious moments here on stage, I am receiving truly the greatest honour of my life as a woman, presenting to you as a woman and accepting this women's prize,' she said. 'And that is because of every single trans person who's fought for healthcare, who changed the system, the law, societal standards themselves. I stand on their shoulders.' The timing of her words and the stage she chose to say them from lend her words particular weight. Just two months ago, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the definition of 'woman' refers strictly to biological sex. The case, brought by campaign group For Women Scotland, argued that sex-based protections must apply only to those 'born female.' The ruling, though framed by the court as not being a victory for one side over another, has major implications for how sex and gender are treated across public life, and for who gets counted as a woman under the law. It is not just the UK. In the US, the rollback of transgender rights is gaining speed under a second Trump administration. This week, the US Supreme Court ruled that states can constitutionally restrict gender-transition care for minors, the latest blow in a coordinated, nationwide effort to curtail trans rights in education, healthcare, sport, and public life. More than two dozen Republican-led states have already passed laws restricting care or limiting trans people's participation in public life. Trump has aligned federal policy with a rigid 'biological sex' framework, barred trans people from serving in the military, and ordered that passports reflect sex assigned at birth. Though there have been some legal victories against these moves, the political momentum has shifted in the West. In a world where womanhood is increasingly being policed by legal and cultural gatekeepers, van der Wouden's declaration is powerful and political. 'Won't thrill you too much with the specifics,' she said, 'but the long and the short of it is that hormonally I am intersex. This little fact defined my life throughout my teens until I advocated for the healthcare that I needed, the surgery and the hormones that I needed, which not all intersex people need. Not all intersex people feel at odds with their gender presentation.' The statement is telling. She reminded the audience that intersex persons are not a theoretical category. They exist with real needs and identities. More importantly, not everyone has homogeneous needs, wants, and identities. The point is not conformity, but autonomy. Her prize-winning debut novel, The Safekeep, is about many things: Female relationships and rivalries, repression, queer love, the Second World War, the lingering legacy of war, memory and forgetfulness, and the meaning of home. However, for Wouden it is a story of collective compliance and redemption: 'The conversation [my novel] has entered into felt all the more important to me in the face of violence in Gaza, in the West Bank, and… the violence my own queer and trans community faces worldwide,' she said. However, there is a silver lining, much like her protagonist, Isabel, it is never too late to see the collective error of our ways and make amends.
Indian Express
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
If you loved The Safekeep, you will devour these 3 books
Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep is having a moment. The Dutch author's debut novel first captured global attention in 2024 when it made the Booker Prize shortlist. Now, fresh off its Women's Prize for Fiction win, it is once again in the limelight: bookstagram cannot stop swooning over it, and book clubs have added the haunting tale of repression, desire, and unraveling secrets in post-war Netherlands to their reading roster. If you were captivated by The Safekeep, you are likely craving more books that plumb the depth of complicated familial relationships, queer desires and the heavy baggage of history. Here are three reads that share similar themes of intimacy, identity, and the weight of the past. For readers who appreciated The Safekeep's exploration of personal and historical legacies, Martyr! offers a poetic dive into identity, addiction, and the search for meaning. Cyrus Shams, a recovering alcoholic and Iranian-American poet, grapples with grief, art, and the ghosts of his past. Akbar's prose is lush and philosophical, weaving together themes of queerness, what it means to be an immigrant , and self-destruction with raw honesty. Like The Safekeep, this novel balances intimacy with existential weight, making it a perfect follow-up. A timeless classic that, much like The Safekeep, explores forbidden desire and the suffocating grip of societal expectations. Set in 1950s Paris, Baldwin's novel follows David, an American man torn between his engagement to a woman and his passionate affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender. The tension between private longing and public performance is palpable as one grapples with the themes of secrecy, shame, and self-denial. Treated with mythic grandeur, the The Song of Achilles has become a modern classic of LGBTQ+ literature. Miller, who studied classics, reimagines Homer's Iliad through the lens of Patroclus, an exiled prince who becomes Achilles' closest companion. The story traces their relationship from childhood friendship to passionate love. In the battle of Gods and demigods, the novel shows how the most profound wars are waged not with swords, but with hearts. The 3,000-year-old love story that reads as freshly urgent as any contemporary romance as the inevitable tragedy gains new power when seen through Patroclus' devoted eyes.
The Hindu
15-06-2025
- General
- The Hindu
Women at work
The generation of women who grew up in the 80s and 90s were 'educated' (along with maths and science) on what was expected of them (us): study, marry, get a job that would 'allow' a prioritisation of family, have children — basically, don't challenge the system. Many of my generation didn't, for most of our lives. The women in this story did, early in their lives. My colleague Nacchinarkkiniyan M. writes about how the women members of the fishing community in some of Tamil Nadu's coastal villages are penetrating oor kootams, village assemblies that are traditionally male bastions, which make decisions on everything from domestic disputes to political matters. Read about how a small step on to a village stage can be a big step into community roles, for womankind. A large part of why they are able to step into decision-making roles is livelihood and access to finance. Grassroots movements will hopefully lead to an upward diffusion of ideas. So it's heartening to hear that the United Nations has declared 2026 as the International Year of the Woman Farmer. Until we acknowledge that a woman is not a 'farmer's wife' or someone who 'helps her farmer-husband', women will never be considered equal decision-makers in the field, even though they may be doing far more labour. Acknowledging women's role in food production is a large part of problem-solving, both at the individual and global levels. By spotlighting women in agriculture, we can hope that their land rights will be affirmed and their voices on climate and ecology heard. Women have of course always been at work, even if looking after babies and homes is not considered an economic activity. But when women in their 20s are formally inducted into an institution that was traditionally out of bounds, it makes us want to hold them close, and whisper into their ears that we live through them — our dreams are their reality. In '17 women look up to the sky', read about the first batch of women cadets who graduated from Pune's National Defence Academy, a 70-year-old institution. Here's what one of the cadets told our reporter Snehal Mutha about an exercise they had to perform as a part of training: 'We had to climb a hill bearing weight as a part of Camp Rovers. Everyone was exhausted because it extends for five days. We hadn't slept properly for three or four nights, and I felt like giving up. But my course-mate Srishti Singh started singing, and we kept climbing. The next thing we knew, the hill was conquered.' That's what it feels like to earn both money and privilege, to feel seen and acknowledged for hours of labour, to be equal in pay and power. A hill conquered. Toolkit 'It remains difficult and rare for women to obtain senior positions in the field of international affairs. Many women find that they have to suppress aspects of their gender to remain competitive in the industry,' says Nussaibah Younis, author of Fundamentally, shortlisted for Women's Prize for Fiction. The book is a satire on international aid organisations parachuting into countries where they 'save' people. The prize was won by Dutch author, Yael van der Wouden, for her debut novel, The Safekeep. Wouden spoke a little about her experience as an intersex person in her winner's speech. Wordsworth Sex ratio at birth (SRB) The number of girls born for every 1,000 boys. In 2022, Bihar had the lowest sex ratio at birth, which had been in decline for three years, says data fromthe Civil Registration System's Vital Statistics Report. While political parties across India have been wooing women with several schemes, at home, there is still a preference for male children, who are seen as part of the family, while a girl child is thought of as 'belonging' to the family she will 'marry into'. Other States with low sex ratios at birth in 2022 were Maharashtra (906), Telangana (907), and Gujarat (908). Nagaland had the highest figure of 1,068, followed by Arunachal Pradesh (1,036), Ladakh (1,027), Meghalaya (972), and Kerala (971). India has slipped to the 131st position in the Global Gender Gap Index 2025. Ouch! I think one of the most beautiful compliments that you could give to a woman that you really admire is to wish for her to mother your children… Musician Badshah, on X Woman we met Nitu Sharma, 42, has run a food cart opposite the Naggar Palace, in Himachal Pradesh, for 20 years now. She sells siddu momos and chai. 'My first earnings amounted to ₹500, and I still have that note,' says Sharma, who has kept the pre-demonetisation money. She says she started the stall with her mother to support her parents, as they had six children to support, and she is the eldest. 'I helped my sister finish her MA in English,' she says, with pride. Sharma never wanted to marry, but says the community is supportive. Her problem though, is with the pucca shops around, whose owners have tried to intimidate her into shutting down, even calling the police once. 'They think women are weak,' she says, adding, 'Ladies ko self-depend hona zaroori hai (Women must be self-reliant). People may support us, but we cannot keep asking for help.'
