Helle Helle

Helle Helle (born 14 December 1965) is a widely translated Danish novelist. Basing her stories on episodes in the lives of ordinary people, she gained fame in 2005 with her novel Rødby-Puttgarden. Now considered to be one of the most outstanding authors of contemporary Danish literature.

Early life and education Helle was born on 14 December 1965 in Nakskov on the island of Lolland. Her name at birth was Helle Olsen. She lived in Nakskov until she was three, but after her parents divorced, she moved to the harbour town of Rødby where her name became Helle Hansen until her mother remarried and it was again changed to Helle Krogh Hansen.

In Rødby, she spent much of her spare time in the local library, increasingly gaining an interest in literature. After matriculating from Maribo Gymnasium in 1984, she spent a year selling perfume on the ferry from Rødby to Puttgarden which provided background for her later novel. She then went on to study literature at the University of Copenhagen from 1985–87.

After four of her early poems had been published in the journal Hvedekorn edited by Poul Borum, she decided to continue her studies from 1989 to 1991 at Copenhagen's Forfatterskolen, Borum's writing school. It was at this time that she adopted her grandmother's family name Helle as she thought the repeated Helle would serve her well as a writer.

Writing career In 1989, she realized she should concentrate on prose rather than poetry. This led in 1993 to her first book, Eksempel på liv (Example of Life), an experimental collection of short fragments of text providing glimpses into the lives of people who live a lonely isolated existence hidden in their rooms. Thereafter she began to write short stories in a succinct level of language, evoking the difficulties people experience in communicating with each other Her first collection was Rester (Remains, 1996) in which the title story evokes the remains of what could have become successful relationships. It was followed in 2000 Biler og dyr (Cars and Animals) where a meeting with death plays a central role.

Published in 2014, Helle's most recent novel Hvis det er (If You Want) presents a chance encounter between two joggers who meet in the woods somewhere in Jutland. They spend the night together in a cabin, trying to keep each other warm. For the first time, it is the man who tells the story in the first-person narrative. Again, there is virtually no plot, the interest revolving around the reactions and evolving relationship between the two characters.

Commenting on This Should Be Written in the Present Tense in the New York Times, Jonathan Russell Clark refers to Helle's "enchanting gifts as a storyteller" while emphasising the work's compelling immediacy. A short review of the same work at the Edinburgh International Book Festival labels Helle as "one of Denmark's most celebrated authors", describing the book as "an intimate, unique novel in which nothing much happens but each sentence is a work of art that captures a whole story in itself".

In Denmark too, Helle's work has been widely acclaimed. Writing in Berlingske, Peter Krogh Hansen gives Hvis det er six out of six stars, qualifying the author as "one of the very, very best" in contemporary Danish literature.

Her novel They, translated into English by Martin Aitken, was reviewed in The Guardian as "one of those novels where little is spoken but everything, by the end, gets said ... a book that begs the reader to slow down and take notice".

Books

Eksempel på liv (Example of Life), Lindhardt & Ringhof, 1993 Rester (Remains), short stories, Samleren, 1996 Hus og hjem (House and Home), novel, Samleren, 1999 Biler og dyr (Cars and Animals), short stories, Samleren, 2001 Forestillingen om et ukompliceret liv med en mand (The Idea of an Uncomplicated Life with a Man), novel, Samleren, 2002 Rødby-Puttgarden, novel, Samleren, 2005 Ned til hundene (Down to the Dogs), novel, Samleren, 2008 Dette burde skrives i nutid (This Should be Written in the Present Tense), novel, Rosinante, 2011 Hvis det er (If you Want), novel, Rosinante, 2014 de (they), novel, Rosinante, 2018 BOB, novel, Gutkind, 2021 Hafni fortæller (Hafni Says), Gutkind, 2023 Hey Hafni, novel, Gutkind, 2025