Hafni Says

Hafni Says is a radically experimental and completely unbridled book. It’s a novel about crisis and downfall, about the will to live, alienation, freedom, guilt and shame, and the heavy gaze of expectation. Simply put, it’s a novel about existence…Helle Helle has long proven that her authorship can’t be dismissed in a subordinate clause. Several of her novels already stand as masterpieces in Danish literature. Hafni Saysis no exception.”

Nordic Council Literature Prize Jury Statement

Hafni’s story makes you both laugh and cry. Full of situational comedy and consummate humour keen to the quirks of language. Full of sorrow and anxiety, simultaneously conveyed and assuaged by Helle’s marvellous writing (…) I envy anyone who is about to read this novel.

Politiken, 6/6 hearts

Helle Helle surpasses herself with Hafni’s shame and screw-ups (…) Like few writers, Helle Helle manages to reproduce herself in such a way that each new novel buds from the one(s) before it, not as a clone or a one-to-one copy, but as one of those small wonders that life (biological and literary) every once in a while bestows upon us. A kind of literary-evolutionary self-propagation, a self-refining process of cell division, the art of writing at its very best.

Berlingske, 6/6 stars

Helle Helle’s Hafni is perfectly perplexed (…) Every sentence is replete and tightly drawn; restrained and controlled (…) [Hafni’s] cleverly turned befuddlement could sound trying, and Hafni herself says: I don’t want to be me. I want to remake myself. But thank goodness, the novel, the smørrebrød tour, quivers with her liberating embarrassment, which is not despondent but deft, precise, drily humorous.

Weekendavisen

(…) let me highlight the splinteringly tight mini-chapters, (again) the strongest (the most well-turned, the funniest, the cleverest) short prose written by anyone on these shores …

Lars Bukdahl

Helle Helle’s literary strength lies in writing about existential ruptures without describing them in words. She sticks to ordinary people and moves on the surface, on the outside.

NRK

Helle Helle surpasses herself with this funny, dark and masterly novel.

Litteratursiden

It’s easy to fall in love with Hafni – even with all of her obsessive compulsive tendencies. Helle Helle has given us a person who spreads out in all directions, as most of us do.

Dagbladet, 6/6 stars

Helle Helle has been nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize for 2024 for Hafni Says Yes, of course she was. Because a novel can hardly get any better than this.

Bok365

With this wonderful novel, Helle raises her standard from gold to platinum.

Vårt Land

Helle Helle distills the art of understatement…

Jyllands-Posten

Helle Helle’s new novel moves elegantly between deep tragedy and wonderful language-savvy comedy (…) The reader swings between savouring the sweetness of the novel’s pinpoint prose and suffering with its hapless main character. One chuckles, and yet is racked to the soul when, together with Hafni, one ‘alight(s) by mistake in the middle of nowhere’.

Information

Above all, she is a profoundly musical novelist who can make even the simplest story truly soar.

Dagens Nyheter (Sweden)

…a brilliant Danish author who should be on every reader’s to-read list. Hafni’s story is both highly recognizable and subtly revolutionary… brilliantly rendered by Helle Helle.

Göteborgs-Posten (Sweden)

The layered narration is artfully constructed. The language is spare yet refined, full of half-sentences and gaps, with pauses for glances and gestures, for shocks, joys, and disappointments. This isn’t minimalism but poetry — compressed storytelling that builds, through a hundred small scenes, into a sweeping novel. […] Helle Helle crafts this female tragicomedy with unburdened elegance.

NZZ - Neue Zürcher Zeitung