Memory, War, and Translation: David McKay on The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje

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In this episode of The Big Book Project, host Lori Feathers is joined by acclaimed translator David McKay to explore The Remembered Soldier, the haunting and deeply psychological novel by Anjet Daanje, newly released in English by New Vessel Press.

This episode unpacks the long journey of bringing The Remembered Soldier from a small regional publisher in the Netherlands to international acclaim—and finally, to English-speaking readers. David shares what drew him to this remarkable work, the challenges of translating its dreamlike prose, and how the novel’s layered structure slowly unravels its mysteries.

📚 The Remembered Soldier follows a WWI Belgian soldier found wounded and nameless in a Ghent asylum. Claimed by a woman who says she is his wife, he’s thrust into a fragile new life that forces him to question everything—his identity, her memories, and even reality itself.

💡 In This Episode:
The real-life inspiration behind the soldier's condition and asylum ads
The psychological tension of memory, identity, and trust
Daanje’s radical narrative style and sentence structure
How trauma and war echo in everyday rituals
The literary legacy of Daanje's work and her next novel, The Song of Stork and Dromedary
This conversation is a deep dive into what makes The Remembered Soldier so unforgettable—and why readers and book clubs alike will be talking about it for years to come.

If you’re reading The Remembered Soldier or planning to, don’t do it alone.
📩 Join the discussion on Substack and share your takeaways.
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Chapters
00:00 – Introduction to Translator David McKay
00:39 – Discovering Anjet Daanje and The Remembered Soldier
03:00 – How the Novel Reached an English Audience
04:16 – The Historical Reality of Forgotten Soldiers
06:06 – Who Is Noon Merkham?
07:11 – Homecoming, Photography, and a Life Reclaimed
09:25 – Paranoia, Love, and the Shifting Mind
11:51 – Sentence Structure as a Reflection of Memory
13:49 – Sample Reading: Paranoia in the Darkness
16:12 – Is Julianne Telling the Truth?
22:17 – Memory as Performance: Photography and Reenactment
24:15 – Battlefield Tourism and Sanitized History
25:29 – Claustrophobia, Monotony, and Emotional Repetition
27:44 – What Was Left Unsaid (Without Spoilers)
28:59 – The Next Novel: The Song of Stork and Dromedary
34:22 – Dutch vs. English: Word Count and Language
36:11 – Final Stages of Translation and What’s Next
38:10 – Co-Translating Off-White by Astrid Roemer
39:40 – A Perfect Pick for Book Clubs


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