Helm by Sarah Hall

Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind – a subject of folklore and wonder, who has blasted the sublime landscape of the Eden Valley 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.

The wondrous, elemental new novel from a ‘writer of show-stopping genius’ – about nature, people and the sliver of time we have left.

About the Author: Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria. Twice nominated for the Man Booker Prize, she is the award-winning author of six novels and three short-story collections: The Beautiful Indifference, which won the Edge Hill and Portico prizes, Madame Zero, winner of the East Anglian Book Award, and Sudden Traveller, shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. She is currently the only author to be four times shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, which she won in 2013 with ‘Mrs Fox‘ and in 2020 with ‘The Grotesques‘.

28 Aug 2025
 

Helm: ‘Incandescently good.’ Sarah Perry by Sarah Hall ISBN 9780571383566