‘I wanted to put it aside. I couldn’t. Every blank line yanked me into the next paragraph, the next abyss. It is precisely through the lack of dramatic flair in her writing that Lara Taveirne makes us conscious of the drama that has so drastically marked her life. A heart-wrenching book. But also heartbreakingly beautiful.’ - David van Reybrouck
‘You’ll be completely submerged in [Taveirne’s] grief for her lost brother and “his desire to disappear completely and indefinitely”. Taveirne makes her and her family’s unfiltered sorrow and fathomless despair uncomfortably tangible.’ – Het Parool
‘In this impressive and moving work of literature, Taveirne shows how imagination is, above all, a weapon to help one face the crippling reality, day after day.’ – Trouw
‘[Taveirne] embraces her powerlessness and her grief to do something magical: she brings her brother back to life.’ – De Groene Amsterdammer
‘[Taveirne] shows how storytelling can help to grasp something as capricious and treacherous as grief. She turns a dark anecdote into convincing literature.’ – De Volkskrant
‘Wolf is a novel about a brother’s chosen death, and a sister’s chosen life. Wolf cries, but does so quietly.’ – HUMO
40,000 copies sold in The Netherlands
Longlisted for the Boon Literature Prize 2026
Longlisted for the Libris Literature Prize
Lara grew up in a vibrant family with five children in Belgium. The youngest child, Wolf, is a lively part of the family, despite the age gap between him and his siblings. Then, all of a sudden, at the age of eighteen he shuts the door of his student room behind him and disappears without a trace.
Six months after Wolf’s disappearance, his body is found frozen to death in a forest in Lapland, Sweden. A diary that is hidden underneath his clothes reveals the wanderings of a lost boy who wanted to die beneath the Northern Lights. Ten years after his death, Lara dares to reread the diary of Wolf’s final journey and between the pages, she not only finds her lost brother, but also herself as a grieving sister who fulfils her brother’s dream to become a writer.
With disarming simplicity and elegance, Lara Taveirne makes us privy to a loving family that is left with doubt, grief, and despair when the unthinkable happens. Yet one thing remains: an all-consuming faith in the power of storytelling and the irresistible pull of fiction.