'The Remembered Soldier' explores trauma, memory, and the fragility of identity

Anjet Daanje’s novel blends WWI trauma with psychological intimacy in a haunting story of love and reinvention.

Illustration by Aelitta

By Novanka Laras and Clarisa Sendy

The Remembered Soldier opens with a haunting reminder of the horrors of World War I and their lingering effects on the minds of survivors. In France, they were called les morts vivants—the living dead. These were soldiers so deeply scarred by the trauma of trench warfare that their identities dissolved. Some became catatonic, others delusional, and in rare but devastating cases, they experienced post-traumatic retrograde amnesia. Without their identity tags, they were forgotten ghosts of war, housed in asylums and displayed in newspapers, their photographs scrutinized by desperate families who had lost loved ones at the front.

This grim historical reality is the basis for Anjet Daanje’s extraordinary novel, The Remembered Soldier. Drawing inspiration from the real-life case of Anthelme Mangin—a man who was claimed by dozens of families after being found with no memory—Daanje constructs a richly layered fictional exploration of identity, memory, and emotional reinvention in the wake of unspeakable violence.

The enigma of Noon Merckem

Daanje’s protagonist is a Flemish-speaking soldier discovered in 1917, wandering alone near the battlefield of Merckem in Belgium. Found around midday, he’s dubbed “Noon Merckem” by asylum staff, a name born of circumstance rather than memory. He has no recollection of who he was before the war, and for five years he lives confined to the Guislain Asylum in Ghent—silent, compliant, and unaware of any life he may have lived.

But in 1922, a Belgian woman named Julienne Coppens responds to a newspaper photo and identifies him as her missing husband, Amand Stephaan Coppens. A former photographer and father of two, Amand was presumed dead during the war. Now reunited, the couple embarks on a deeply complex journey of rebuilding a life together.

Relearning love and the uneasy return to normalcy

As Amand reenters the Coppens household, he is a stranger in his own life. Julienne, too, remains guarded—torn between the yearning to reconnect and the anxiety that the man before her might never be who he once was. Their reunion is not immediate or passionate but rather awkward and tentative. Daanje meticulously portrays the psychological nuance of this strange cohabitation, in which each party plays roles they barely understand.

Over time, Amand begins working alongside Julienne in their photography studio. Familiar routines and shared labor begin to rebuild trust, and a new kind of intimacy emerges. Though Amand cannot remember loving Julienne in the past, he finds himself falling for her in the present. For him, their relationship is a kind of courtship—filled with the innocence and excitement of new love, despite its complicated history.

The weight of forgotten trauma

But even as Amand attempts to embrace his new life, something inside him resists. Dreams bring forth fragmented memories—not of domestic bliss, but of war. These haunting images of violence and death intrude upon his waking life, sparking dissociative episodes and panic attacks. Though he plays the part of the grateful husband and “miracle man” returned from the dead, his internal world tells a different story.

Here, The Remembered Soldier blurs the line between performance and reality. The home Amand returns to is not the one he left—it is shaped by Julienne’s memories, her hopes, and perhaps her needs. She fills in the gaps of his identity, but with a narrative that may serve her as much as him. Daanje deftly explores how the stories we tell—both to ourselves and to others—can become substitutes for truth.

War as spectacle and the myth of remembrance

Daanje’s novel also critiques the way societies commemorate war. Amand’s photography studio becomes a place where grief and performance intersect. Widows pose with him in uniform, constructing images of reunion that never occurred. He becomes a symbol of survival, a proxy for the men who never returned. In one chapter, the family visits Ypres, a city still scarred by battle but now a site of tourism. Trenches are traversed by casual visitors; bombed-out buildings are backdrops for postcard pictures. The real cost of war is being buried beneath souvenir culture and romanticized memory.

Through these moments, The Remembered Soldier questions not just personal identity, but collective memory. How do we choose to remember war? Who gets to shape those memories, and what is lost in the process?

A marriage built on invention

More intimate, though, is the emotional terrain the novel surveys in Amand and Julienne’s marriage. As Amand grapples with his reemerging memories, he begins to suspect that Julienne’s recollections might not be entirely honest. Her stories about their past are selective, controlled—like photographs framed to exclude unwelcome truths. She, too, is transformed, altering her dress, mannerisms, and speech. Just as he is reborn, she is reinventing herself.

In its portrayal of love and dependency, The Remembered Soldier suggests that all relationships involve a kind of mutual fabrication. But here, the process is intensified to an extreme. Amand’s very sense of self is constructed on Julienne’s words. When that foundation starts to crack under the pressure of recovered memory, the emotional consequences are devastating.

A demanding but rewarding narrative

Daanje’s writing style demands commitment. Her prose is dense and rhythmic, often mimicking the flow of consciousness with long, cumulative sentences. David McKay’s English translation maintains this cadence, creating an immersive, if sometimes challenging, reading experience. The use of repetition—especially through the frequent conjunction “and”—conveys a sense of time unmoored from chronology. Like Amand’s fractured memory, the narrative exists in a continuous present.

While some readers may find the pace deliberate, the emotional payoff is profound. Daanje allows her characters to reveal themselves layer by layer, in minute interactions and subtle shifts. The result is an extraordinary intimacy, a sense that we know these people not just through their actions, but through their thoughts and contradictions.

Daanje’s masterful portrayal of fractured identity

Anjet Daanje, already one of the Netherlands’ most celebrated writers, solidifies her reputation with The Remembered Soldier. This is not merely a war novel or a love story—it is a deep psychological exploration of what it means to lose oneself and to be rebuilt by others. It is about the lies we need to survive and the truths we fear to rediscover. And above all, it is about the human desire for connection, even in the face of memory’s betrayal.

In capturing the tragedy and tenderness of Amand’s return to a life he cannot remember, Daanje delivers a powerful meditation on trauma, identity, and the haunting persistence of the past.