BOB

Helle Helle

Original title: BOB
Publisher: Gutkind, Danmark, 2021
Genre: Novel
Pages: 118 pages

“Out moves Bob and I with him to Vanløse”.

So begins Helle Helle’s new novel Bob published in January 2021.

Bob’s not sure what he wants to do.
His girlfriend’s wrapped up in her uni course.
She’s the ‘she’ from they.

Meanwhile, he’s got a bit of part-time at the Seamen’s Home, when he’s not doing up their new bedsit and losing himself in Copenhagen street names. Most of all he wants a future with her. She’s the novel’s narrator. But all she talks about is Bob’s life – especially the bits that don’t involve her.

“Just think, at some point we’re going to get married and have kids. He’d uttered the same sentence before, most recently last week, and afterwards he’d thought: I’m not going to say that again for a very long time. Only now he already had."

Foreign rights

Dutch: Querido
German: Dörlemann Verlag
Swedish: Norstedts
Norwegian: Forlaget Oktober

Awards

The Montana Prize for Literature 2021

An interview with Helle Helle, produced by the Louisiana Channel:

Helle Helle’s new novel is quite simply brilliant … With uncomplicated ingenuity, she shows us the difference between wanting to be free and being free.

- Berlingske, 6 stars

A classic Helle Helle novel … carries forward and renews (the oeuvre) … In BOB she dazzles with the comedy of its situations and words, brilliant as a circus acrobat whose great artistry is to perform her stunts with an effortless shrug.

Information

Helle Helle

Photo by Mikkel Carl

Helle Helle (b. 1965) is a graduate of the Danish Academy of Creative Writing and the author of a number of novels as well as two collections of short fiction. She is one of Scandinavia’s most original writers, with a career spanning three decades, from her debut Example of Life (1993) to her most recent novel, Hafni Says, published to rave reviews in 2023. Her books have been translated into 24 languages.