Munich-born author Daniel Kehlmann made his name with his fourth novel, the international bestseller Measuring the World (2005), an artful dramatisation of the lives and world-changing discoveries of two famous German scientists. His most recent novel, F in 2014, focused more on ordinary people and their character-enhancing self-discoveries.
In Kehlmann's latest novel – actually novella – the protagonist does not so much have a need for self-discovery as a capacity for self-deception. You Should Have Left (neatly translated by Ross Benjamin) is a well-crafted tale about one man unravelling due to forces beyond his control.
Increasingly, odd incidents and eerie effects play with his mind, warp his judgment and influence his actions. He soldiers on, believing he has the situation under control. Can he recognise the chaos in time and extricate himself from it before it engulfs him?
“It is fitting that I’m beginning a new notebook up here. New surroundings, new ideas, a new beginning. Fresh air.” So writes the book’s unnamed narrator in his journal on Day One of six. His new start is in a rented house in the mountains with his wife Susanna and four-year-old daughter Esther. In Alpine isolation, he sets out to finish his screenplay for a sequel to the film that launched his career.
The first disturbances are commonplace. He argues with his wife. He struggles to understand the characters he has created. He drives in a sweat down hazardously steep and winding roads in his “fuel-filled capsule”, all-too aware that, “One second you’re firmly ensconced in everyday life and thinking about dinner and your tax return, the next you’re wedged in deformed metal while the flames devour you.”
In the village in the valley, he tells a shopkeeper where he is staying. “Anything happen yet?” is the ominous response.
Things start to go bump in the night, and also in the day. He has feverish nightmares, sees ghostly reflections in windows and hears voices on the baby monitor; he is mystified by words he didn’t write, terrorised by an old woman with “awful” eyes, and disorientated by the house’s shifting proportions and perspectives. “You should have left,” he says to himself at crisis-point. “Now it’s too late.”
This book has an obvious literary model: The Shining by Stephen King. Kehlmann even alludes to it to help any readers slow at making the connection. "I do find myself thinking of that movie sometimes," says Susanna, referring to the Stanley Kubrick film. "That good movie based on the not-so-good book." She adds: "The one with all the Steadicam shots."
All work and no play made King’s Jack Torrance a dull boy and a manically repetitive writer. Kehlmann’s narrator’s writing is also the product of a disturbed mind, only his output takes the form of scrappy notes, fragmented ideas and unfinished sentences.
There is a chilling moment when film producer Schmidt calls him to check on his progress. "Nothing came to me. All the things I had sketched and thought through, all the situations and punch lines were as if erased." But Kehlmann's novella has just as much in common with one of fiction's most famous spooky novellas, Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Both books eschew supernatural fantasy for distorted reality – what James called, "the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy".
Like James with his governess, Kehlmann forces us to question his narrator’s sanity. Does his memory deceive him and do his eyes and ears play tricks on him? Are these uncanny goings-on happening within or without?
Not everything works. When Susanna tells her husband that “nothing’s more boring than talking about dreams”, we wish he could have heeded her advice and toned down relaying his reveries. And towards the end, Kehlmann resorts to standard suspense-genre tropes: Susanna disappears, the narrator flees into the wilderness with a distraught Esther and his mobile phone has no reception and a fast-draining battery.
Otherwise, 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. The narrator's journal slides from excerpts from his screenplay to accounts of his own creeped-out tragedy, and slips from coherence to jumbled trains of thought, and each time we lose purchase yet delight in the confusion and the tension.
While navigating hairpin bends on the mountain road the narrator admits that “the abyss came so close that I cried out”. Kehlmann brings that abyss ever closer and takes his narrator, and his reader, over the edge.
Malcolm Forbes is a regular contributor to The Review.
RESULT
Norway 1 Spain 1
Norway: King (90 4')
Spain: Niguez (47')
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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The full list of 2020 Brit Award nominees (winners in bold):
British group
Coldplay
Foals
Bring me the Horizon
D-Block Europe
Bastille
British Female
Mabel
Freya Ridings
FKA Twigs
Charli xcx
Mahalia
British male
Harry Styles
Lewis Capaldi
Dave
Michael Kiwanuka
Stormzy
Best new artist
Aitch
Lewis Capaldi
Dave
Mabel
Sam Fender
Best song
Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber - I Don’t Care
Mabel - Don’t Call Me Up
Calvin Harrison and Rag’n’Bone Man - Giant
Dave - Location
Mark Ronson feat. Miley Cyrus - Nothing Breaks Like A Heart
AJ Tracey - Ladbroke Grove
Lewis Capaldi - Someone you Loved
Tom Walker - Just You and I
Sam Smith and Normani - Dancing with a Stranger
Stormzy - Vossi Bop
International female
Ariana Grande
Billie Eilish
Camila Cabello
Lana Del Rey
Lizzo
International male
Bruce Springsteen
Burna Boy
Tyler, The Creator
Dermot Kennedy
Post Malone
Best album
Stormzy - Heavy is the Head
Michael Kiwanuka - Kiwanuka
Lewis Capaldi - Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent
Dave - Psychodrama
Harry Styles - Fine Line
Rising star
Celeste
Joy Crookes
beabadoobee
Read more from Johann Chacko
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
Fixtures
Tuesday - 5.15pm: Team Lebanon v Alger Corsaires; 8.30pm: Abu Dhabi Storms v Pharaohs
Wednesday - 5.15pm: Pharaohs v Carthage Eagles; 8.30pm: Alger Corsaires v Abu Dhabi Storms
Thursday - 4.30pm: Team Lebanon v Pharaohs; 7.30pm: Abu Dhabi Storms v Carthage Eagles
Friday - 4.30pm: Pharaohs v Alger Corsaires; 7.30pm: Carthage Eagles v Team Lebanon
Saturday - 4.30pm: Carthage Eagles v Alger Corsaires; 7.30pm: Abu Dhabi Storms v Team Lebanon
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
On sale: Now
FROM%20THE%20ASHES
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Getting there
Flydubai flies direct from Dubai to Tbilisi from Dh1,025 return including taxes
UAE squad
Humaira Tasneem (c), Chamani Senevirathne (vc), Subha Srinivasan, NIsha Ali, Udeni Kuruppuarachchi, Chaya Mughal, Roopa Nagraj, Esha Oza, Ishani Senevirathne, Heena Hotchandani, Keveesha Kumari, Judith Cleetus, Chavi Bhatt, Namita D’Souza.
In Full Flight: A Story of Africa and Atonement
John Heminway, Knopff
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
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Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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The Pope's itinerary
Sunday, February 3, 2019 - Rome to Abu Dhabi
1pm: departure by plane from Rome / Fiumicino to Abu Dhabi
10pm: arrival at Abu Dhabi Presidential Airport
Monday, February 4
12pm: welcome ceremony at the main entrance of the Presidential Palace
12.20pm: visit Abu Dhabi Crown Prince at Presidential Palace
5pm: private meeting with Muslim Council of Elders at Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque
6.10pm: Inter-religious in the Founder's Memorial
Tuesday, February 5 - Abu Dhabi to Rome
9.15am: private visit to undisclosed cathedral
10.30am: public mass at Zayed Sports City – with a homily by Pope Francis
12.40pm: farewell at Abu Dhabi Presidential Airport
1pm: departure by plane to Rome
5pm: arrival at the Rome / Ciampino International Airport
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
Russia's Muslim Heartlands
Dominic Rubin, Oxford
