Scribe acquired World English rights to The Song of Stork and Dromedary, the next book by Dutch author Anjet Daanje, translated by David McKay. Daanje and McKay are the pair behind the International Booker-longlisted title The Remembered Soldier.
27 February, 2026
Scribe to publish The Song of Stork and Dromedary
Set to publish in October 2026, The Song of Stork and Dromedary is a masterful, multi-award-winning novel, inspired by the life and work of Emily Brontë, and acclaimed as the best Dutch novel published this century. Originally published by Uitgeverij Passage in 2022, it’s the first book to have won both major Dutch literary awards, the Libris and the Boekenbon. Rights have been licensed in sixteen languages so far, and Scribe licensed North American rights to Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The Song of Stork and Dromedary will be published on the 29th of September in Australia, and the 8th of October in the UK. It will also be published in North America on the 18th of August by FSG.
‘If just for once in my career as a literary critic, I could award six stars instead of the maximum of five, I would award them this week — to The Song of Stork and Dromedary by Anjet Daanje, a novel that left me so overwhelmed that I have not yet fully recovered … I have never had a reading experience like this one, and I don’t know if I will ever again be so impressed by a book.’ Thomas de Veen, NRC Handelsblad
‘Daanje presents such an absorbing narrative spectacle that I can compare her book only to the masterly Possession by A.S. Byatt, the Booker Prize winner in 1990 … Daanje’s book is just as marvellous … monumental in scope, erudite, overflowing with wonderful stories.’ Maaike Meijer, De Groene Amsterdammer
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$39.99 AUD
The Song of Stork and Dromedary
Inspired by the life and work of Emily Brontë, this masterful, multi-award-winning book — acclaimed as the best Dutch novel published this century — pulls readers into a narrative that redefines time itself.
In the early 1800s, in Yorkshire, Eliza May Drayden and her sisters live far from the public eye, devoted to their shared love of reading and writing books. When, after dozens of rejections, Eliza May’s only novel, Haeger Mass, is finally published, it’s labelled as ‘ghastly’ and ‘immoral’. Over time, however, it is embraced by generations of readers as a masterpiece, and tales about its mysterious, reclusive author take on a life of their own.
In eleven extraordinary chapters, the story of Eliza May — both before and after her death — unfolds: through the tales of people who met her; her sister’s letters; her biographers’ words; the pages of a mysterious notebook; and the lives that become intertwined with hers, even centuries later.
In The Song of Stork and Dromedary, Anjet Daanje has crafted an absorbing literary mystery and an unforgettable meditation on love, life, loss, and the inexplicable nature of time. As the Brontës themselves did, Daanje shows us that storytelling is our only way to transcend death.
$37.99 AUD
The Remembered Soldier
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
THE NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2025
THE NEW YORK TIMES “The Best Historical Fiction Novels to Read Right Now”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 2025 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
An extraordinary love story and a captivating novel about the power of memory and imagination.
Flanders 1922. After serving as a soldier in the Great War, Noon Merckem has lost his memory and lives in a psychiatric asylum. Countless women, responding to a newspaper ad, visit him there in the hope of finding their spouse who vanished in battle. One day a woman, Julienne, appears and recognises Noon as her husband, the photographer Amand Coppens, and takes him home against medical advice. But their miraculous reunion doesn’t turn out the way that Julienne wants her envious friends to believe. Only gradually do the two grow close, and Amand’s biography is pieced together on the basis of Julienne’s stories about him. But how can he be certain that she’s telling the truth?
In The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje immerses us in the psyche of a war-traumatised man who has lost his identity. When Amand comes to doubt Julienne’s word, the reader is caught up in a riveting spiral of confusion that only the greatest works of literature can achieve.
Anjet Daanje
Anjet Daanje writes novels, short stories, and screenplays. Her breakthrough novel, The Remembered Soldier, won the Netherlands’ 2020 F. Bordewijk Prize and the Best Book of Groningen Prize. The Song of Stork and Dromedary won the 2023 Libris Literature Prize, the most prestigious award for Dutch literature, and the Boekenbon Prize, the Netherlands’ other major literary award — the first time that the Libris and Boekenbon prizes have been won by the same book. It has since been licensed in 13 languages and has sold over 100,000 copies in the Netherlands. Scribe has licensed North American rights in its edition to Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
David McKay
David McKay is an award-winning translator of Dutch fiction and nonfiction. Born and educated in the United States, he has lived in and around The Hague since 1997.
