…she leans over the retouching desk restoring other people’s lives.
I think, more than any other line, this quotation encapsulates The Remembered Soldier. Yet, how can one fragment of a sentence thoroughly impart the impact of this book? It can’t.
When I first saw the title, and the cover, on the International Booker Prize, I balked. “I do not want to read a book about war,” I said to myself. But, The Remembered Soldier is about so much more than war. It is about memory, and identity, being a soldier, and perhaps most importantly of all, being married.
An American author would come out and tell you everything boldly: Julienne found Amand, after searching for eight years, in an asylum; he’d lost his memory, but she claims to be his wife; going home together, they forge a life together. That wouldn’t be much of a story, would it?
Fortunately, it is not nearly so simple. The nuances must be carefully gleaned to solve this puzzle. We must live through his memories, or lack thereof, and while relying on Julienne’s stories for background we wonder if perhaps she is lying, just to keep him with her.
Julienne says marriage is just like having children, it’s for life, she says, he’s not a dog you can get rid of if you’re not satisfied, and her candor is so disarming that he almost wishes he really were her husband.
Is he? Isn’t he? We don’t know, although we read of their life as a married couple. He builds her a special table to retouch the photographs she takes, as photography is their business. He wakes up next to her in their shabby bed, gets the coal, picks the milk up from outside the door, heats the water so she can wash. In a thousand ways, they are one.
And then, he must pursue the vision he has, of Kathe, in yellow…
And he dreams he finds not Kathe, but the war, and he realizes that’s what he’s been looking for the whole time, it’s just that he gave his war a woman’s name, and her body is ravaged and cold and infertile and she’s married to death.
Don’t be deceived. Read on, my friend, to find out who Kathe is. Who Julienne is. Who the remembered soldier is. And as you’re reading, prepare to be mesmerized by writing the likes of which I have never known. This is a book which will I never forget, a mystery I would never have conceived on my own, the quality of which I am unable to accurately describe.
In my opinion, it is the only true contender for the International Booker Prize 2026, and most certainly ought to be declared the winner.