First published in Dutch in 2021 as Om het hart terug te bregen. It won the 2023 Henriette Roland Holst Prize. The Afrikaans ‘back-translation’, Onder ’n bloedrooi hemel, was published in 2023. Annemarie van Niekerk interweaves her return to South Africa in 2015 after her friend Ruben and his mother are brutally murdered on his farm in the Eastern Cape, with memories of earlier journeys from the 1960s to the 1980s. From Port Elizabeth, where she grew up in a loving but strict Afrikaner family; to Umtata, where she lectured and fell in love with Denzel, a black colleague; and to Hillbrow and Yeoville, where she and Denzel illegally lived together, until violence tore their relationship apart.