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Helle Helle

Original title: de
Publisher: Rosinante, 2018
Genre: Novel
Pages: 156 pages

She and her mother have lived in many places in the small town, currently over the hairdresser’s. It’s a corner flat, and doesn’t look like much from the outside. It’s always been just the two of them. In April, her mother finds something wrong with her body. October feels very long while they wait for a response from the hospital. Meanwhile, she starts high school. Here she meets Tove Dunk, Hafni, Bob, Desert Boots and a host of others. they is a depiction of mother-daughter relationship, a story about sickness and love and going to high school in the early 80’s.

Foreign rights

Czech: Pasena
Dutch: Querido
English (NA): New Directions
English (UK): Akoya Publishing
German: Dörlemann Verlag
Norwegian: Forlaget Oktober
Portuguese: Porto
Spanish: Deleste
Swedish: Norstedts

Awards

Nominated for the Nordic Prize for Literature 2019
Nominated for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation’s Book Award 2019

they is a challenging but rewarding read – a page-staller, if you like. It shows us something, too, about what fiction really is. Strip away the false or melodramatic conventions, and you remember that novels simply require us to take an interest in a life other than our own. And, given that the pace and pressure of the 21st century discourages us from noticing ourselves, let alone those around us, that requirement is a wonderful act of discipline. Slow your heart, slow your attention span – you’ll be mesmerised

The Telegraph, five stars

A small-scale, acute portrait of a mother-daughter relationship in a time of crisis is a marvel. […] There is no sentimentality in this beautiful novel, but adjustment, compassion and wonder: ‘some leaves descend one at a time, the name of the road is something containing blue’.

The Irish Times

Every sentence is significant, and you have to take time to imbibe the moods and read the details and their indirect characteristics, what they reveal about the characters and their thoughts.

Nordjyske Stiftstidende

Helle Helle’s minimalism isn’t boring; it crackles with mystery. It’s the everyday, and yet it’s insistently beautiful. A book … I’d like to re-read immediately.

Weekendavisen

You laugh and laugh, cry and cry. Not bawling or sobbing, but quiet and intense. That’s what it’s like reading Helle Helle.

Politiken, 6/6 stars

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, Hey Hafni, published to rave reviews in 2025. Her books have been translated into 24 languages.