You Should Have Left: A Novel [Paperback]

From the internationally best-selling author ofMeasuring the WorldandF,an eerie and supernatural tale of a writer's emotional collapse

A screenwriter, his wife, and their four-year old daughter rent a house in the mountains of Germany, but something isn’t right. As he toils on a sequel to his most successful movie, the screenwriter notices that rooms aren’t where he remembers them—and finds in his notebook words that are not his own.“Mind-bending. . . . Part horror, part science fiction.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A book that should carry a health warning: read alone at your own risk.” —Monocle
 
“Riveting.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Clever, exquisitely terrifying. . . . [Kehlmann] makes entertainment out of metaphysics.” —Harper’s Magazine
 
“A masterclass in economical storytelling, meticulously attentive prose and imaginative agility. Kehlmann creates narrative complexity with the deftest of strokes.” —The Literary Review

“[A] master novelist. . . . [Kehlmann] has a rare ability to make complex ideas the stuff of warm, light fiction.” —The Times Literary Supplement
 
“A beautifully crafted exercise in terror. . . . [Kehlmann] creates a sense of existential dread that transcends the typical ghost story. . . . A book to keep you up at night.” —Kirkus Reviews(starred review)
 
“[Kehlmann] is in total control. . . . He and his translator Ross Benjamin squeeze an enormous amount of readerly anxiety out of very few carefully placed words. . . . This is a story about a marriage in trouble, and about a seemingly impossible desire to protect a young child from threatening reality, but also about something else, something unavoidable and powerful but terrifyingly vague. . . . l#”