Skilful blending of past atrocities and near present-day conflicts in a South Africa where the end of Apartheid has not eradicated the cruelty inherent in the system.

Willem is sent to a training camp to be 'made a man' but the charismatic and bullying leader is out of control.

Haunting and compelling.

I had high hopes when I read the description of this book, but I'm afraid I was disappointed. The book is in 2 parts: one is the diary of a woman who was taken from her home with her young son and placed in a refugee camp during the Boer war. I found this quite interesting, as I know very little about this part of history. However, I felt that this part of the story was left hanging. The other part tells the story of 16 year old Willem, whose parents send him to a camp which promises to make a man out of him. This is set in recent times. Although the subject matter is not very cheerful, I found it difficult to warm to the characters and become invested in their story. Thanks to NetGalley for a preview copy.
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I was shocked when I finished this and discovered the author wasn’t South African; it was written with the disappointment and tenderness usually felt by a parent for a recalcitrant child or a native of a flawed nation.
I lived in SA as a UK expat from 1974-79 so was present (though a pre-teen) during some of the years covered here and it felt very vivid to me. It’s a compliment to Damian Barr that this was such an accurate depiction of a beautiful land at war with itself. Well - and at war with Britain!
The chapters about the concentration camps was heart-wrenching. I kept finding myself torn between sharing the misery of Mrs van der Wat and a twinge of karmic vengeance for what her people did to the indigenous folk. Then remembering she wouldn’t know any better. Then remembering that she should have. An emotional roller coaster for sure, and that’s before we jump to the 70s and then the 90s and beyond to see a people flailing wildly in the death of their identity as the master race.
The novel was inspired by a poignant true story and I hope this becomes a much wider known tale as when I googled it, I could barely find out what happened.
In short, I strongly recommend this powerful debut.

A very moving and sad debut novel about a time in history I knew little about but written in such a beautiful way making it a book though dealing with difficult subjects also an enjoyable read. My main struggle was with the formatting of the book on my kindle and this made it at times hard to follow however it was worth all that as the writing was just so wonderful. Highly emotional and something very different I can well recommend this book.
My thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

An interesting and important story that dramatises parts of South Africa's troubled history through multiple generations of a Boer/Afrikaaner family. The first part is the strongest for me as a wife whose husband is fighting the British in the Second Boer War is placed in a British concentration camp with her young son.

Anyone who doesn't know about this particularly dark episode in Britain's brutal colonialist regime may well be shocked as well as enlightened. It's especially interesting to track our own emotional response as we're horrified by Sarah's plight - and yet simultaneously remember that the Afrikaaner Boers are themselves descended from Dutch colonialists who have killed, displaced and enslaved black native Africans. The Boer Wars were, ultimately, about who owned the gold and diamond mines of South Africa (barely mentioned in this book) and the capitalist struggle between white empires.

The second section is a stolid connector that links Sarah's story to later generations - it feels flat and 'told' after the intimacy of Sarah's camp diary - and there are some cheesy moments that link the family stories in too obvious and convenient a way.

Part three takes place in a post-Mandela, post-apartheid South Africa as key Boer Afrikaaners refuse to accept modernity and seek to reimpose a regime of white supremacy which gets tangled up with a form of toxic masculinity.

There are times where the politics of this book feel opaque. The writing can also be uneven: the immediacy of Sarah's diary is vivid and involving, the switch to third person in sections 2 and 3 less so. There's also something a bit too simplistic about the straight-line connections being made across history: (white) Afrikaaners were ill-treated by the (white) British and that led to them implementing and justifying apartheid? Hmm, the relationships between white colonialists and black Africans is more complicated than that...

All the same, this book takes a look at a part of history that is rarely fictionalized, and is worth reading for the camp diary alone: 3.5 stars.

You Will Be Safe Here is an exceedingly powerful book with a narrative that weaves and twists in exciting ways. It might be tempting to say that the book is really about one person, Willem, a young boy sent to a camp in the outback where he can be reeducated into behaving in ways white South African Boer society would like, but in actuality the novel is threaded with multiple stories and perspectives.

The camp Willem is sent to is barbaric. It is run by an old Captain who lives with the legacy of the Boer Wars and believes in reclaiming a South Africa long dead. He trains the boys as if they were in the defunct national service, serving them inadequate food rations, making them crawl under barbed wire, forcing them to dig all day in the heat for his grandparents’ treasure buried long ago when they fled the English in the Second Boer War.

It is this complex political legacy that allows the narrative to branch off into history, taking us into the diary of a wife and farmer forced into an English concentration camp in the Second Boer War where her refusal to sign in favour of the English costs her rations and more. As we also follow some of Willem’s grandmother’s life, we track South African history over the 20th century and into the 21st. The twist (stop reading now if you don’t want to know) is that the Captain who runs the camp Willem is sent to, is a van der Watt, the same as the lady writing about the concentration camp.

Though the characters’ journeys feel compelling and real, in a sense, the book is part history lesson. There is a historical note at the end of the narrative and though the characters are fictitious, they are based in fact. Damian Barr manages to bring the people of this South Africa to life. He shows their multiple motivations and their intermingled histories and connections. He points the finger at the English for their behaviour in the Boer Wars and the implications that behaviour had upon the development of apartheid. He does an excellent job of showing the complexity of South African history. Out in April of 2019, this is a novel to put on your wish list.

You will be safe here is a thought provoking, moving debut novel set in S Africa, primarily taking in a family interred by the British in the boer war and an Afrikaaner ‘training camp’ in 2010 designed to make young, fey, bookish Willem a ‘real man’. Taking in the history of Willem’s family en route, this explores an area of modern history that’s new to me; i can’t vouch for the accuracy but there is a searing emotional truth as well as the evident underpinning research (in a good way, not exposition heavy). The narrative and interconnected nature is both believable and shocking. Equally startling is that this is just Barr’s first novel after his memoir Maggie and Me.

An extraordinary book, taking me on a journey through a history I knew shamefully little of. The narrative is so compelling that you find yourself totally immersed in each story, to the point you can almost visualise the scene unfolding around you. Whether it's the women's camp or the training camp, the unstinting detail brings it completely to life. By the end I was emotionally drained but hugely grateful to have had the early opportunity to read this amazing story. Bravo Damian Barr. This is one I won't forget

What a stunning piece of literature! I'll be the first to admit I know nothing about the Boer Wars or South Afric but I fell in love with this book. I feel vulnerable after reading as it's highly emotional but well worth the time of any reader! 5/5

I had no idea that concentration camps existed during the Boer Wars in South Africa, I had no idea that so many people had been mistreated and ruined at that time, people who were just living their lives and struggling in a harsh environment. In the first section of the book we meet Sarah, struggling to cope as she is interred with her young son into a concentration camp run by the British, her husband is off fighting and their farm has been razed to the ground as part of the scorched earth policy. Sarah is the first link in the chain of this story which travels through time in South Africa from then to 2015. The characters are all linked by family lines and their stories all show something of how the history of a country forms attitudes and social norms all the way through to now. Sarah's diary of her time in Bloemfontein Camp is horrific, so much so that I wandered off to search for confirmation of the conditions and discovered the most ghastly photographs.

Many years later we meet Rayna and Irma and Willem Sarah's decedents in a new South Africa, where the laws have changed, where violence is increasing and where social order has been disrupted. Not everyone is comfortable with the new ways, the abolition of Apartheid and the changing expectations of how the black people are to be treated. The uncomfortable transition to equality is hard to read. The author has done a wonderful job of making you feel every side of the situation. He drew me into the characters world and made me understand their points of view, although it is uncomfortable reading at times, it is hard to deal with such views from this corner of the world. The creeping menace of the ever growing walls to keep the bad guys out, at the same time as keeping the world and your connection to it out.

Willem is so beautifully written, his fragility and sensitivity juxtaposed against his mother's partner the awful Jans. Willem's mother Irma, torn between the new bloke in her life and her son who she doesn't really understand and whom to her mind seems to be lacking something. Thank goodness for Rayna, the grandmother who loves this sensitive boy sincerely, and who ultimately is his saviour. "Know, she didn't know. No, she didn't know. Know, if only she'd known."

This book is a lot! There is so much depth, it has the most beautiful moments amongst the heartbreak and terror. Along the reading journey with this book, not only the terrible history of torture and struggle, I've thought about Willem and the others like him, struggling in a harsh society, the terror of their lives, the fear and the trying not to be noticed. The pain of knowing you don't quite fit with everyone else and trying to disappear. All of this is written so beautifully. I'll be thinking about this novel for a long time, my poor heart will need to recover.

Bravo Damian, you've written a gem of a book and I am so delighted about that as a reader and as a cheerleader.