You Should Have Left

A well-crafted tale about one man unravelling due to forces beyond his control . . . You Should Have Left - part-horror, part-psychodrama - serves up effective shocks and thrills that keep us rapt and on the edge of our seats . . . Kehlmann brings that abyss ever closer and takes his narrator, and his reader, over the edge. -- Malcolm Forbes * National *
Wry, eerie and increasingly terrifying . . . Daniel Kehlmann is certainly in complete mastery of an entertaining Everyman's postmodernist Gothic guaranteed to unsettle -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
Kehlmann plays on our manipulated expectations to pull off a rather spectacular hat trick . . . You Should Have Left is a story full of craft and scintillating devices . . . A chilling, curious little book, finely translated, and a promise of innovative maturity for its author -- Mika Provata-Carlone * Bookanista *
His fiction, conspicuously clever, tends to puncture all the dusty, lugubrious 'worthiness' of canonical literature . . .You Should Have Left [is] a taut and scary novella . . . [with] some high-grade science in it -- Hermione Hoby * Sunday Times *
It's a masterclass in economical storytelling, meticulously attentive prose and imaginative agility. Kehlmann creates narrative complexity with the deftest of strokes. He's also laugh-out-loud funny. This is both a highly readable novella and a subtly derisive challenge to readers to question the value of their own enjoyment. -- Luke Davies * Literary Review *
A sense of menacing claustrophobia, as the characters - and readers - teeter on the edge of an inexplicable abyss . . . Using some neat formal trickery and a cleverly suggestive atmosphere, this is a story about a marriage in trouble . . . At first glance there may not seem much to this little book, but it has a funny way with dimensions - its effects are amplified, and they linger. -- Daniel Hahn * Spectator *
Unsettling, tightly written (in an excellent English translation by Ross Benjamin), psychological suspense and outright, physics-defying horror . . . Kehlmann is a skilled storyteller who takes what could be a run-of-the-mill horror tale and builds it into something more intelligent, metaphysical, concise and perfectly paced as it cranks up the chill . . . Frightening and thought-provoking -- Charlie Connelly * New European *
This mind-bending novella about a writer losing his marbles contains images that startle and linger . . . The most arresting of the book's chilling moments might do for baby monitors what 'Jaws' did for swimming in the ocean . . . [Kehlmann] manages a few darkly comic flourishes . . . provocative . . . potent . . . pleasantly unsettling -- John Williams * New York Times *
A beautifully crafted exercise in terror from one of Germany's most celebrated contemporary authors . . . Kehlmann creates a sense of existential dread that transcends the typical ghost story . . . A book to keep you up at night * Kirkus *
A ghost story steeped with a sense of existential dread and it will have you rereading the chilling final pages to figure out exactly what might have happened. It is a book that should carry a health warning: read alone at your own risk. -- Georgia Godwin * Monocle *
Kehlmann is one of the brightest, most pleasure-giving writers at work today, and he manages all this while exploring matters of deep philosophical and intellectual import. * Jonathan Franzen *
Daniel Kehlmann is one of the great novelists for making giant themes seem light * Adam Thirlwell *