Helle Helle’s "they" sold to New Directions in the US

The good news continues to roll in for Helle Helle: a nomination for the Nordic Council Literature Prize last week and now a sale to one of the US’ most prestigious publishers.

New Directions are honored to have acquired award-winning Danish novelist Helle Helle’s they . In acquiring editor Maya Solovej’s words, they is “a work of subtle power and great beauty about a quietly aching young woman.” Solovej praised the novel as “exquisite, oblique, calibrated, odd, and oddly moving” and the author for her “laser-accurate observation of detail and extreme economy of words, and that brittle, limpid sense of crystalline reality, touched with irony, the way she figures depth into surface.”

We are so excited for this incredible book to reach English readers in Martin Aitkin’s translation. they has already been sold to five countries (Czech: Pasena, Dutch: Querido, German: Dörlemann Verlag, Norwegian: Forlaget Oktober, Swedish: Norstedts).

Congratulations Helle and New Directions!