About the book: The Left-Behind Child is a debut novel exploring the cost of migration on children left behind in the Philippines making it a landmark moment for Filipino representation in British literature. It draws on a story familiar to millions of Filipino families: a mother forced to leave her family and the child who is left to carry the weight of that absence.
Lipa, Philippines, 2001. Neneng is 11 when her mother, Rosa, leaves to work as a nurse overseas: abandoning Neneng to care for a distant father, unsettled relatives and rebellious siblings. Their home shatters, and Neneng finds herself facing womanhood alone.
From that point on, she vows never to become a nurse, and never to trust her mother again.
But Neneng is more like the strong-minded Rosa than she realises. As Neneng fights to survive and build a new life, the darknesses in the family’s past come to light, and the reasons why Rosa needed to leave become clearer.
When a twist of fate brings a new mother figure into her orbit, Neneng will come to understand why the profession of nursing matters so deeply to Rosa and – when crisis strikes – what ‘care’ means to Neneng.
The Left-Behind Child will be published on 13 August 2026.
About the author: Romalyn Ante FRSL is a Filipino-British poet, essayist, and editor. She was born in Lipa, Philippines, and was 16 years old when her mother – a nurse in the NHS – brought the family to live in the UK. Her debut poetry collection, Antiemetic for Homesickness, was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize, longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2020 and named among the best poetry books of the year by the Irish Times and Observer. Her second collection, AGIMAT was published in 2024. She holds a Fellowship from the Royal Society of Literautre. She lives in the West Midlands where until recently she worked as a full-time NHS nurse and psychotherapist, specialising in the mental healthcare of young people. She also co-founded Harana Poetry, a literary journal for poets who write in English as a second or parallel language.













