When you're fourteen, there is no afterwards.

It all begins when Tanja meets Eg. Handsome, grey-eyed, he is a friend of her parents and a teller of stories. Soon, he begins to write-sending letters that arrive at her home in the Swedish forest, drawing her deeper into a fated love offering escape from an isolated childhood.

Tanja steps through a door into adult experience from which there is no return, a relationship where desire and excitement give way to shame and control. Years later, now a poet armed with the language to name what happened, she finds a box of Eg's mildewed letters and begins to read.

Hauntingly lyrical and fearlessly honest, A Girl Left the Room is the story of one woman's fight to reclaim the girl she once was.

'Gripping, chilling, and extraordinarily clear-eyed. . . A novel that everybody should read' Rosie Price, author of What Red Was

'An entire world of complicity unfolds moment by moment. . . It kept me pinned to the page' Sîan Hughes, author of Pearl

'It's compelling. It's shocking. It's hypnotic in its clarity. . . A stunning debut from one of Denmark's leading poets' Christina Patterson, author of Outside, the Sky is Blue

'So blunt, so well written, Lolita speaking out, telling her truth. A superb book' Dorthe Nors, author of Mirror, Shoulder, Signal



Ulrikka S. Gernes is a Danish poet and writer. She was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2016 and later served as a juror. She has received multiple grants from the Danish Arts Foundation and is also the author of several children's books. Her debut novel, A Girl Left the Room, became a Danish bestseller. Ulrikka has an adult daughter and lives in Copenhagen in an apartment filled with art and books.Caroline Waight is an award-winning literary translator working from Danish, German, and Norwegian into English. Her work includes translations of authors such as Caroline Albertine Minor, Ingvild Rishøi, Maren Uthaug, and Dorthe Nors. She was a finalist for the 2023 PEN Translation Prize and received a special commendation in the 2023 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. Caroline is based near London.



This novel is phenomenal - gripping, chilling, and extraordinarily clear-eyed. Ulrikka S. Gernes sets out with incredible poise, care and unflinching honesty the mechanics of coercion, the muddying of desire in its abuse, and the phenomenal strength that is required of a young person to find herself again on the other side of such a betrayal. This is a novel that everybody should read



Beautifully written, unflinchingly honest. A Girl Left the Room is a modern classic, frequently shocking but never less than compelling because Gernes is so deeply insightful on what is constructed, excused, or inexcusably stolen by men in the name of love



The news in recent years has been flooded with accounts of the abuse of young girls, but their voices are often drowned out by the noise. Ulrikka S. Gernes's first novel, a fictionalised account of her own experience of a stolen adolescence, cuts through it. It's compelling. It's shocking. It's hypnotic in its clarity. I was gripped from the first page and wept at the last. This is a stunning debut from one of Denmark's leading poets



An entire world of complicity unfolds moment by moment. It kept me pinned to the page, longing for Tanja to rewrite herself, to travel back in time and become her own person. . . The real genius of the storytelling is that the fractured memories build into a compelling narrative without ever stepping outside the close-up confusion of a betrayed childhood



I loved Ulrikka S. Gernes' book. It's so blunt, so well written, Lolita speaking out, telling her truth. A superb book



This is a shocking and unforgettable novel. It is a story about the playful desire of a young girl and the heavy abuse of it. This is Lolita's story rewritten by Lolita. Only now does it get its own place in literature and the perspective is staggering



A powerful story about a young girl taken hostage by the regard amoureux of an adult man



A gripping story about grooming and the betrayal adults