A Girl Left the Room

Author: Ulrikka S. Gernes

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 4 June 2026 by PUSHKIN PRESS in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 336 pages
215 x 135 x 28 | 340g

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