An eminent writer stands in a lecture hall and speaks of her latest, abandoned, work - no more than a jumble of notes - about a journey she made into the Latin American rainforest accompanying an experimental theatre-maker. Ten years prior, two Dutch women disappeared in the rainforest, leaving few clues as to their fate. Determined to understand what happened to them, and to stage their story, the theatre-maker and his entourage set out on their trail, moving deeper into the dense thicket. Soon, however, members of the troupe begin to tell their own stories too: moments of slippage, rupture and violence which they recount to the writer, accounts in which a dark truth is briefly illuminated. And so, the writer comes to realise that they will be tested, both by the seething forest and by their monstrous endeavour. The Dutch Women is a mesmeric, multiple-prize-winning novel about civilisation in extremis. Attuned to our fear of what's irrational or uncontrollable - of what's buried within us, threatening to break through - Dorothee Elmiger's UK debut leaves us disoriented, staring wide eyed into the darkness.