Helm
Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind – a subject of folklore and wonder, who has blasted the same sublime landscape since the very dawn of time.
This is Helm’s life story, formed from the chronicles of those the wind enchanted: the Neolithic tribe who tried to placate it, the Dark Age wizard priest who wanted to banish it, the Victorian steam engineer who attempted to capture it – and the farmer’s daughter who fell in love. But now Dr Selima Sutar, surrounded by measuring instruments, alone in her observation hut, fears the end is nigh.
Rich, wild and vital, Helm is the elemental tale of a unique life force – and of a relationship: between nature and people, neither of whom can weather life without the other.
About the author
Sarah Hall is a two-time Man Booker Prize nominee, the author of seven 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’.
Judge Mark Haddon on Helm
"An absolute tour de force. An interwoven braid of narratives, ranging from prehistoric times to the present day, all set in the Cumbria and all centred on Helm, the only named wind in the British Isles. By turns moving and funny, theological and ecological, sinister and sexy, it is relentlessly inventive and always entertaining."