This books delivers two very powerful stories both which are set in South Africa with over a century separating them. The cover is simple with the words that should reassure, set in between barbed wire, ‘You will be safe here’ but now that I have read this book it makes me so cold and ashamed.
I didn’t realise when I began this book that the story set in 2010 had been a true story so  what had been a horrendous, intense and a captivating story now became a nightmare that filled me with so much sadness that I had to find out more. Unfortunately this book tells the story very truthfully and yet I had wished it had been more fiction than fact because of what happened.
The two stories are joined with a school trip to a museum dedicated to the homestead families during the second Boer war, who had become an embarrassment to the British government when these farmers were holding their own against a much larger trained army of soldiers. Terrible measures were put into force that would cripple the country and leave thousands of women and children forced into ill-equipped concentration camps where the death rate rocketed.
Raymond, who this book is dedicated to and his class are given role play cards with people’s names that had been in the camps with snippets of how life was for them and if they survived or died at the end of the war. Raymond had learning difficulties and often became the laughing-stock of his peers when under stress as he had little accidents.
Raymond loved his grandmother dearly and she loved him for who he was too. It had always just been him, his gran and mum but his mum had a new man and trouble started between them. Raymond is shipped out to a training camp for difficult boys and things just escalate very rapidly.
This is an outstanding book that once I finished would just keep popping back into my mind. The haunting camps, the characters that I got to know, who were also real and Raymond who broke my heart in so many ways. It seems sometimes that be it war or training camps it is a beacon to the psychopaths to crawl out of the woodwork to openly induce suffering in the most vile ways and hide it behind labels.
Two very powerful stories perfectly delivered, I won’t forget either of them.
I wish to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an e-copy of this book which I have reviewed honestly.. 
This book had such an impact on me I went on to buy a signed edition from Waterstones, one to keep!

Two interwoven stories examine South African attitudes towards outsiders- the Afrikaner farmers who were interned in camps by British colonisers, and the 'weak' boys sent to brutal camps designed to turn them into right-wing activists. The book does not excuse the heinous acts committed against Afrikaners in the past, but offers no sympathy towards their radicalised decedents. The book is unflinching in its descriptions of torture, enacted on women and children in the 1800s and young men in the 1990s-2000s. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the darker parts of British history and the paths that lead white men towards radicalisation. I would urge anyone who reads this book to research 'gay conversion' camps worldwide and support the charities, politicians and survivors who are fighting to ban them.

You Will Be Safe Here is a novel that blends a stories from 1901, the 1970's  and modern day to give a representation of South African history. It is fiction, but inspired by true events. It's a hard hitting book and while the gap between the different characters are great, Barr has blended them perfectly. It isn't a light read and I found myself struggling a little because it does get quite bleak but it's definitely worth persisting.

This is not my usual type of book - although I do at times enjoy coming of age tales. Tragic and uplifting in equal measure, this story weaves a historical tale and a modern story. The setting of the story is not one I know well, which is one reason I tend not to be drawn to historical fiction. Overall I really enjoyed this book and the stories within. Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for an ARC.

You Will Be Safe Here is a hard-hitting gut-punch of a novel telling the complex story of the Boer War, subsequent life in South Africa and the part the British government played in setting up concentration camps and perpetuating racism. The time it covers is about one-hundred years which could be tricky as it's a large span of time, but Barr manages to balance it beautifully. We would like to think that times have changed and this could no longer happen but is that really the case or are we kidding ourselves with history having been doomed to repeat itself. Who can be sure?

Our presence in this stunning country led to the adoption of what became known as a “scorched earth” policy which took those unwilling to sign a pledge of allegiance to the British Crown and evicted them from their homes placing them into internment camps. Heartbreakingly, this is a history that appears to be rarely spoken of in the West but given the implications, I guess it's entirely predictable why this important topic isn't covered in the British school curriculum. It's a poignant, heartfelt and emotional novel with a wonderful cast of characters whose wisdom and insight in the face of real adversity warms the heart and leaves you profoundly moved.

Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC.

'You will be Safe Here' opens with teenage Willem being taken, much against his will, by his mother and step-father to a New Dawn camp, designed to 'toughen him up a bit'. Willem's story does not conclude until the end of the book, by which time both we as readers and Willem, have experienced a lot.

In the meantime we are taken back to 1901 and the diary of Mrs Sarah van de Watt. Her husband had gone to fight the English, leaving Sarah and their son on the family farm. The farmers know that the English are approaching, and implementing their 'scorched earth' policy they are burning all farmsteads to the ground and destroying animals and crops to prevent them from providing support to the Boer fighters.

Sarah's diary entries are letters to her husband. They make heart-rending reading as she maintains her dignity, even as the English arrive at her home, make an inventory of her belongings, slaughter her animals then set fire to her home. She and her son are taken by cart to concentration camps - not extermination camps, but containment camps. The conditions are, however, dire with insufficient rations (including poisoned meat) and dreadful sanitation. The fate of the black farm workers is to be interned in black camps, with even harsher conditions.

Sarah hides her diary from the authorities and continues to write. Her entries tell of kindnesses, of the extremes a mother will go to in order to care for a child in such conditions and of each individual's fight for survival.

However we leave Sarah's story  and jump to  1976 and meet Rayna and eventually her daughter Irma, and her son, Willem. The stories eventually intertwine, giving us an outcome for some of the characters, but for others, their fate is lost in history.

I think this book grew on me, rather than be an instant 'hit'. It is certainly one of those books where I went straight back to the beginning and read the prologue again, having completed the book. I realised how little I knew about the Boer Wars and was grateful for the historical note at the end. I will certainly read more about the history.

As the book jumps frequently from one time to another and from one person's story to another, I'm not sure that I really identified with many of the characters, other than Sarah. Although the stories do eventually come together, I found it rather disjointed as the Prologue, Part 1 and then Part 2 all start with  different characters. However I would recommend the book. It is a fascinating account not only of the war, but the ongoing division and struggle which are still simmering throughout the 20th century and beyond.

Many thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for providing a review copy of this book.

You Will Be Safe Here covers the Boer War and life in South Africa many years after. Ground not frequently tread in novels. The story of Sarah Van Der Watt, a young farmer's wife during the war, was the most heart-wrenching of the book. Heart-wrenching and yet beautiful, too. The way she described her day-to-day life on the farm was touching, sweet and rich with emotive power. Her existence turns on its head as she is uprooted, with her young son, and moved to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp. For her own safety, the British say. From there her world becomes dark and sad with caring for Fredy her only priority. It felt as if we lived with Sarah for quite a while then suddenly we are taken away to follow the story of Rayna, more than 70 years later. It was rather jarring but just go with it. It all becomes clear as the various stories interweave with each other. 

I don't want to discuss the specifics of the story beyond what I've said as I would hate to spill some intricate piece of the puzzle. There is much, here, to fill your heart with empathy and create a strong bond between the characters and the reader. Such a lovely painful book is one that is both difficult to read and impossible to put down. South Africa is such a wondrous place. I knew it had a turbulent past but to see it through the eyes of these characters makes it real and tangible to those of us who live our lives far away both in time and distance. 

This life-affirming book is perfect for book clubs and those looking to see into the events of our history. You Will Be Safe Here will open your eyes and touch your soul.

It seems a strange thing to say, but I'm not totally sure whether or not I enjoyed this book! I think that's because I enjoyed some of it, but found that, at times, it became slow and I almost gave up on it. From a historical point of view it was very interesting. We learnt a bit about the Boer wars at school but I was totally unaware of the internment camps and the horrific conditions in them. I found the story of Willem the most interesting part of the book. I think my problem with the book stems from the fact that it's set over three different time periods and though eventually the reader does get to link them all together, there are times in the book when you wonder where it's going.

Wow!! I weren't expecting to be gripped by this book but I was.
Thank you Damien Barr for bringing awareness of the atrocities of the Boer war and also the recent history of Concentration Camps that still exist in the world today.

So, it's been two days since I finished this book, and I still don't know how I am going to do it justice.

The story spans over 100 years in South Africa, from the second Boer War to post apartheid 2015. The main protagonists are an Afrikaans Boer wife and mother, who is taken to a concentration camp set up by the British (yes! that happened!) and a reserved, bookish teenage boy who is forced into a military style camp (dare we say conversion camp?!) by his misguided mother and brutish step father. 

The way Barr connects these two seemingly separate narratives is touching and heart wrenching. I was fully immersed in the experience from the get go. There are multiple POV's within this story and occasionally it felt a bit jarring, but in such a capable author's hands, all is forgiven. I especially felt a connection to Willem (the teenage boy in 2010) and was so invested in his story that by the end I neglected my own children to finish the book. 

This is a wonderful debut novel that left me heartbroken yet hopeful. It is shocking and compelling and I feel as though the characters will remain with me for some time. Bravo Mr. Barr!

This is a heartbreaking read. It is a part of history that I knew existed but so little is said about it in history class. It was interesting and gripping the whole way through. There has been so much heartbreak and division through the generations. These stories need to be told. 

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

It’s especially exciting as a reader when I start a novel and immediately feel engrossed by the story. This is a difficult thing to accomplish because it’s not just the content that needs to grip me but the style and tone of the narrative have to confidently guide me into the fictional world being presented. But I did feel wholly inside the story of “You Will Be Safe Here” by Damian Barr starting with the prologue where a teenage boy named Willem is forcibly taken by his parents to a sinister institution in 2010 and this feeling continued into the first chapter when a woman named Sarah describes her fear at the sight of distant smoke in 1901 as she knows this means military forces are nearing her farm. 

So begin the stories of two different South African individuals at opposite ends of a century. This immersive novel explores the egregious fact of British-run concentration camps during The Second Boer War and camps in the present day designed to toughen up white young South African men who are deemed too effeminate or soft. These institutions are prisons that go by different names because they are purportedly for their inhabitants’ safety and improvement, but they’re really a slow form of torture. Through their pernicious practices we see warring ideologies about what makes the South African national identity and the unfortunate individuals who are the casualties of this political battle. It’s a heartrending tale, but it’s filled with so many beautifully realized moments that I didn’t want to look away and could relate to these characters’ stories (even though they are far different from my own life.)

A largely unknown truth this novel presents is the history of how the British operated concentration camps in South Africa from 1900-1902. Most people (including me) think of concentration camps as a Nazi invention during WWII, but prior to that they were implemented during the Second Boer War as a British military strategy to break up guerrilla campaigns. Civilian homes were destroyed and the inhabitants were herded into these poorly run camps to prevent the Boers resupplying from a home base. Thousands of civilians died in these overcrowded camps – mostly because of malnourishment and disease. This was shocking to discover and the story vividly brings us into the reality of what it was like to be interred in one of these camps. Though they weren’t designed as death camps that’s what they became for many. The novel movingly shows that there was cruelty but also moments of human kindness, friendship and a complex community spirit which arose in the face of adversity. 

Being immersed in this history, it was difficult to see how Barr would create a bridge between this tale from the past and the one set in the near-present day. But the way he connects the two is gracefully done as we recognize characters between the two sections and see how the politics of the past can still be felt today. The thing which really drew me to Willem’s character is his bookish nature as he prefers spending time in the library at school rather than playing sports. Stories present an escape from his present where he’s ruthlessly bullied and ostracised. But what I most admire about the way the author handles Willem’s character and his storyline is that he’s not shown to have any particular sexuality though he’s labelled by his father and other boys as a “moffie”. Whether he’s still uncertain about his sexuality or keeps it private isn’t a concern for the reader and this better highlights how the issue is really the standards of masculinity all boys in this environment are being held to. Equally, a friendship Willem develops with another boy is delicately and complexly handled when it could have so easily become a cliché in the hands of a less talented writer.

This novel came with a huge amount of expectation. Not only was Damian Barr’s first book a compassionate and insightful memoir about growing up in the time of Thatcher. But he also regularly hosts the most impressive and glitziest literary salon in London where the guests he interviews include some of the best and most famous writers of today. Interacting with such literary greats puts a lot of pressure on this host to create a first novel that's really something special, but the result is so original, impactful and mesmerising to read that it's a real triumph. I've been lucky enough to get to know Damian a bit over the years and I always feel a lot of anxiety reading something by a writer I know because if I don't enjoy it I need to awkwardly explain to them I don't think it's their best (or pretend I've not found time to read it.) So I was thrilled to discover what a genuine joy it was reading this story and what an impressive, finely researched, artfully constructed novel it is! It's really made me rethink how I look at history – the many ways victorious nations conveniently forget their failings and crimes when teaching world history. I also felt such a connection to the characters that they're going to linger in my imagination for a long time.

I can’t to this embarrassingly ignorant of the real life history behind it. I’m one of those that was never taught about the Boer wars at school and despite family connection to South Africa knew little of its history. Likewise I hadn’t read anything about the newer younger generation of South Africans whose lives are reflected in the second half of this incredible novel. 

I also, I’ll admit, approached this novel with slight trepidation, fear of it being too literary for me based on my wrong perception of the author style. And for anyone else out there with similar thoughts let me banish those for you now as this is utterly accessible.

The novel is split broadly between two tone periods.... the early part of the 20th century and an account of a mother and son, uprooted by the British from their farm and placed in a concentration camp as part of the boer war campaign.

The second part is told from the 1979s to present day and features three generations of white South Africans fearful of the changes to their nation and how this fear and history of their country leads to catastrophic family decisions when Willem the son/ grandson does not conform to the white supremacist views many in the country have grown up with. 
Harrowing at times, brutal and devastating chapters throughout but such an important read. It has educated me like no other novel in recent times.

Well written with an interesting insight into what life could have been like in South Africa for different people and just how deep the bitterness and divide goes.

Having finished this book, I have struggled to rate and review it, as I found it a somewhat uneven read.   It is set in three different periods – 1901, 1976 and 2010.   The characters include a Boer farmer’s wife, Sarah, and her young son, who are captured by the British and find themselves in a concentration camp, and later descendents of hers, coping with a changing South Africa.

The author tells the history of a country, through these characters, and the first part of the novel, which involves Sarah’s diary, written to her husband, as she is forced to leave Mulberry Farm, is easily the most engaging.  The British took everything, burning her beloved home to the ground, according to the ‘Scorched Earth’ policy,  before shuttling Sarah, son Fred, and her neighbours, off to an internment camp.  I had read something about this historical period before and were aware of these  camps, which were the first to target a nation of people – although such camps had been used before, by the Spanish, for example.  However, the author uses Sarah well, to explain what happened to a whole group of people, who were targeted and treated appallingly, with starvation and disease widespread. 

In a way, the rest of the novel suffers a little, as the beginning is so vivid and immersive.   I was moved by the story of Willem, sixteen years old, and sent to the New Dawn Camp, to make a man of him.  His aggressive step-father, and obvious unhappiness, made the macho environment, he had to endure, difficult to read.  However, the novel did flag a little in the middle for me.   If you are interested in the history of South Africa, this will be of great interest to you and it would be a good choice for reading groups, as there is so much to discuss.  I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

A story of South Africa and something that we British should hang our heads in shame about - Concentration camps, said to be Kitchener's ruse.  Sarah and her son are sent to one during the second Boer War.  A racist history which seems to be repeated in 2010 when Willem is sent to a military type school where they promise to 'make a man of him'.

Not a book I could get alongside.

I see that there are mixed reviews for this book.  Set in the time of the Boer war. Sarah Van Der Watt and her son Fredy are taken from their home, their help murdered and sent to the Bloemfontein Concentration camp. Where the British they reckon they are there for their own safety but realistically are prisoners fighting for their lives. I never knew that there were concentration camps and the hardships in the time of the Boer war. 

Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury publishing for and ARC of this book Unfortunately for me personally, I couldn’t engage with this book at all. There was nothing for me to keep on reading. So because of that I DNF it at 30 percent.

A dark study set in Southern (later South) Africa and covering the experience of Sarah, interred in a British concentration camp during the Boer War, then jumping to 2015 where we find 16-year-old Willem, a descendant of Sarah’s being sent to a boot-camp-type place by his parents to ‘make a man of him’.

The story of the concentration camps and accompanying British ‘scorched earth’ policies of burning all the farmland and poisoning wells so the farmers cannot return to their land is appropriately horrific.  No wonder this is not a part of our history that is washed out of the British history we are taught in school and which is rarely referred to.  Shameful indeed, and it was good to be reminded that concentration camps were not invented by Nazi Germany.  Sarah’s story and personality shine in her strength and compassion in such a place, but her story was left hanging rather and I somehow found it difficult to engage with her or the other characters.

Likewise, I could not warm to the characters in the second half of the book, most of whom seem to embody racism.  The author does try to show how such attitudes can be develop and gives us different points of view to help us understand the causes behind all this.  All the same, I find it hard to get through a book when I cannot truly empathise with any of the characters, and I struggled to do so even with the ‘better’ ones.

I think there is a lot to be learned and understood from this book and it has great value as a comment on history and on how people can become entrenched in their views for better or for worse, but it didn’t work for me somehow – I need to become invested in a at least one or two of the characters and found I could not become engaged.  Indeed, I really struggled to keep going and only did so as I had promised to write this review.

This storey tears at your heart stings.  There is so much history in this book, in a place that is little known about.  The Boer war is not a subsect widely written about, in fiction.  The storey follows the life of one boy and what happens to him, but also a family whos farm is burnt to the ground.  It is gripping, and you won't put it down.

I struggled to engage with this book so did not finish it.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to review it.