You Will Be Safe Here
- Author Damian Barr
- Narrator Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 28 March 2019
- Run Time 8 hours and 14 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Fiction: general and literary, Historical fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Politics, Romance, War, combat and military adventure fiction.
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What to expect
Bloomsbury presents You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr, read by Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo.
An Observer, Guardian, Financial Times, Irish Times, Irish Independent, Big Issue and Strong Words Pick of the Year
‘This is a book that tilts the world’ STYLIST
'A gripping, heartbreaking tale of uncomfortable histories and the resilience of love' GRAHAM NORTON
'I want you to read this ... I enjoy a lot of books but few stay with me like this has' PHILIPPA PERRY
'Completely gripping and profoundly moving' MAGGIE O'FARRELL
'Very beautiful. Only a truly wise and kind person could write such a book' MAX PORTER
'Heart-wrenching ... redemptive and full of love' JOJO MOYES
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME
The book that will change the way you see the world.
2010. Sixteen-year-old outsider Willem just wants to be left alone with his books and his dog. Worried he’s not turning out right, his ma and her boyfriend send him to New Dawn Safari Training Camp. Here they ‘make men out of boys’. Guaranteed.
1901. The height of the second Boer War in South Africa. Sarah van der Watt and her son are taken from their farm by force to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp where, the English promise: they will be safe.
An Observer, Guardian, Financial Times, Irish Times, Irish Independent, Big Issue and Strong Words Pick of the Year
‘This is a book that tilts the world’ STYLIST
'A gripping, heartbreaking tale of uncomfortable histories and the resilience of love' GRAHAM NORTON
'I want you to read this ... I enjoy a lot of books but few stay with me like this has' PHILIPPA PERRY
'Completely gripping and profoundly moving' MAGGIE O'FARRELL
'Very beautiful. Only a truly wise and kind person could write such a book' MAX PORTER
'Heart-wrenching ... redemptive and full of love' JOJO MOYES
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME
The book that will change the way you see the world.
2010. Sixteen-year-old outsider Willem just wants to be left alone with his books and his dog. Worried he’s not turning out right, his ma and her boyfriend send him to New Dawn Safari Training Camp. Here they ‘make men out of boys’. Guaranteed.
1901. The height of the second Boer War in South Africa. Sarah van der Watt and her son are taken from their farm by force to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp where, the English promise: they will be safe.
Critics Review
There is pain on these pages and poetry too. I left this book bruised yet somehow better for it
Lean, beautiful prose … It pulls you in, breaks your heart and then ultimately repairs it
A searing debut
A stunning dissection of human barbarism … It tells a story so powerful and upsetting that it’s a wonderful reminder of how fiction can illuminate the indignities visited upon those the world has mistreated and then forgotten
This is a book that tilts the world, showing how the actions of the past can never be fully escaped by the present
Barr’s writing has a lightness of touch and warm humour which makes it easy to root for him ... His life has become a triumph
Packs a hefty emotional punch ... Extraordinary
A poignant debut, written with empathy ... Barr's first novel is distinguished by its compassion, its wisdom and its remarkable sense of poetry
The harsh poetry of the land anchors the text, its red earth stretching out beneath starlit stillness, unchanging from generation to generation … By its end, so many instinctive responses will have been upturned that the reader will be left with just two certainties: that the circularity of man’s cruelty to his fellow human beings is endless, and that only kindness is stronger
A devastating novel about the destruction of childhood which visits a little known part of South Africa’s recent shameful history ... Damian writes beautifully and wears his research lightly, in this most affecting of novels
Completely gripping and profoundly moving – you care for every character. Each of the very different stories is deeply affecting and they’re woven together in such unexpected and powerful ways. Barr handles the most difficult material with the lightest touch
Damian Barr’s fine first novel wears its research lightly and animates two very different eras with impressive skill. The main characters are all convincing and the overarching theme – that people can do monstrous things with the best of intentions – is explored with intelligence and passion
A gripping, heartbreaking tale of uncomfortable histories and the resilience of love
Barr has a keen eye for wincingly evocative detail ... Lyrical
Brutal, haunting, redemptive and with not an ounce of fat left on it. Beautiful
Eye-opening and meticulously researched
Both a damning indictment of one of the most ignoble periods in British history and a haunting portrait of modern South Africa
Funny, tender, and heartbreaking ... A gifted storyteller
Epic … Immersive, moving, horrifying and beautiful. You will LOVE it
Skilfully interweaves interlocking stories from the Boer War and contemporary South Africa as it unflinchingly brings the horrors of hidden colonial history into the light of day and shows how hurt seeps down the generations
This would be an achievement for a third or fourth novel; for a first, it’s an astonishing one. Barr’s handling of his bravely chosen material - the conjoined shames of British and Afrikaaner history - is deft and the results will haunt you
Devastating and formally ingenious, it traces the paths by which historical grief engenders present violence … A vitally brave and luminously compassionate book
It’s rare for a novel to go so deep that you come out of reading it a different person from when you went in. Damian Barr’s investigation of a part of South Africa’s history the British have been trying to forget for many many years is such a book. It was a very brave book to write, and parts of it call for some courage to read, but nothing more unusual and impressive has appeared for years
Damian Barr has written a novel concerned with single strain of human history, of how a people are made and unmade and how they go on to make and unmake others, of the stories they tell themselves to allow such things to pass. In so doing he has captured the threads of all of human history. You Will Be Safe Here is as unexpected as it is unsettling, both in the telling and in the way that telling works to reveal hidden trails through the points of light and darkness, such that the reader arrives at the end to stand before a view over one hundred years in the making and says, I see it now
You Will Be Safe Here is eviscerating in its rendering of violence and masculinity in South Africa [and] exquisite in its depiction of suffering and love. You will see the world differently after reading this – it speaks so eloquently and compassionately against a world defined by dominance and brute force and the blind repetition of history. It brought me to tears – the beauty of the language, Barr's tenderness with his characters, and the horror that is done in the name of power
[Barr] has achieved something remarkable – a powerfully moving tale that weaves dazzlingly between the Boer war and contemporary South Africa
Few writers can wind you with a word. But Damian Barr doesn't just do that, he tickles and then floors you, delights only to devastate, within a single phrase
Damian Barr splits open lost history, sunlit moments of love and all private grief with this novel, a chisel at one end and a telescope at the other. Insightful and compassionate, open-hearted and unblinking, Barr gives us three unforgettable stories in this powerful, groundbreaking book
Wonderful. I finished the book in tears ... [Barr] writes beautifully, emotively and yet cleanly, without pressing any point so hard that it becomes polemic instead of truth
Sweeping yet intimate, heart-breaking yet often very funny … This book confirms Barr as one of our most brilliant and big-hearted writers
Brave, compassionate and beautifully written
A gorgeously written novel
Barr proves that the future has the power to reshape the past. He also reminds us of the effects of time mean people living in the same place can inhabit different worlds … Time is almost too quaint itself, too neutral a concept if we think about it only in terms of measurement, to properly capture what Barr sets out to achieve. This is a book about time as the accumulation of experience, both personal and collective. Experience is the same as history and history is the things people do. This is a book about the things people do to each other
An incredible novel
It teaches you things that history left out and leaves you angry, yet profoundly moved. It’s so well-conceived, structured, and written, that you want to thrust it at everyone, and insist that they read it
User Reviews
14/04/2025
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