Available Formats
Hardback, Main
Published: 2nd September 2025
Paperback, Export - Airside ed
Published: 2nd September 2025
Helm
By (Author) Sarah Hall
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
2nd September 2025
Export - Airside ed
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Metaphysical / philosophical fiction
Narrative theme: Environmental issues / the natural world
Paperback
368
Width 153mm, Height 234mm
'Hall makes language shimmer and burn.' DAMON GALGUT
'No one writes like Sarah Hall.' SARAH PERRY
'I can think of no other British writer whose talent so consistently thrills, surprises and staggers.' - BENJAMIN MYERS
A wondrous, elemental novel from 'a writer of show-stopping genius' (Guardian).
Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind - a subject of folklore and awe, who has blasted the sublime landscape of the Eden Valley since the very dawn of time.
Through the stories of those who've obsessed over this phenomenon, Helm's extraordinary history is formed: the Neolithic tribe who tried to placate Helm, the Dark Age wizard priest who wanted to banish Helm, the Victorian steam engineer who attempted to capture Helm - and the farmer's daughter who loved Helm. But now Dr Selima Sutar, surrounded by infinite clouds and measuring instruments in her observation hut, fears human pollution is killing Helm.
Rich, wild and vital, Helm is the story of a unique life force, and of a relationship: between nature and people, neither of whom can weather life without the other.
Hailed as a 'writer of show-stopping genius' and a two-time Man Booker Prize nominee, Sarah Hall is the award-winning author of six novels and three short-story collections. Notably, she is the only author to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice - first in 2013 with 'Mrs Fox' and again in 2020 with 'The Grotesques'.