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Fiction Historical

The Dutch Wife

A Novel

by (author) Ellen Keith

Publisher
HarperCollins
Initial publish date
Apr 2018
Category
Historical, Military, General
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781443454278
    Publish Date
    Apr 2018
    List Price
    $11.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781443454261
    Publish Date
    Jul 2019
    List Price
    $18.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781443454254
    Publish Date
    Apr 2018
    List Price
    $22.99

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Description

Amsterdam, May 1943. As the tulips bloom and the Nazis tighten their grip across the city, the last signs of Dutch resistance are being swept away. Marijke de Graaf and her husband are arrested and deported to different concentration camps in Germany. Marijke is given a terrible choice: to suffer a slow death in the labour camp or—for a chance at survival—to join the camp brothel.

On the other side of the barbed wire, SS officer Karl Müller arrives at the camp hoping to live up to his father’s expectations of wartime glory. But faced with a brutal routine of overseeing executions and punishments, he longs for an escape. When he encounters the newly arrived Marijke, this meeting changes their lives forever.

Woven into the narrative across space and time is Luciano Wagner’s ordeal in 1977 Buenos Aires, during the heat of the Argentine Dirty War. In his struggle to endure military captivity, he searches for ways to resist from a prison cell he may never leave.

From the Netherlands to Germany to Argentina, The Dutch Wife braids together the stories of three individuals who share a dark secret and are entangled in two of the most oppressive reigns of terror in modern history. This is a novel about the blurred lines between love and lust, abuse and resistance, and right and wrong, as well as the capacity for ordinary people to persevere and do the unthinkable in extraordinary circumstances.

About the author

ELLEN KEITH is a Canadian writer and recent graduate of the University of British Columbia’s MFA program in creative writing. Her work has appeared in publications such as The New Quarterly and The Globe and Mail and has received the Anton Fiction Prize and James Patrick Folinsbee Prize in Creative Writing. She spends much of her time abroad, travelling across South America, dancing salsa and tango, and cycling along the canals of Amsterdam, where she currently resides.

Ellen Keith's profile page

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