Both NAYANTARA ROY’s The Magnificent Ruins and YAEL van der WOUDEN’s The Safekeep are debut novels that were lauded around the globe last year, and both introduce us to complex, unforgettable young female protagonists who uncover dark secrets. In Roy’s novel, an Indian American book editor in New York is summoned back to Kolkata to inherit her family’s sprawling estate, leaving her to confront resentful family members who still live there, above all, her cold, mercurial mother. In The Safekeep, another house looms large, this one in the rural Dutch countryside in 1961, where Isabel is living in isolation, until her brother’s girlfriend abruptly moves in, and the women tumble into a secret, obsessive affair, leading to a stunning plot twist that also manages to be a riveting exploration of the Holocaust. In conversation with ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING, Roy and van der Wouden will talk about the roads to their novels and about keeping faith with their literary ambitions.