"Hafni says" out in English to rave reviews

Helle Helle’s Hafni says (Hafni fortæller, Gutkind 2023) is now out in English (UK: Akoya, NA: New Directions, AU/NZ: Giramondo, tr. Martin Aitken) – and reviewers are showering the book with praise!

“Compact, witty and episodic – written in short sections that mix exquisite attention to detail with impressionistic interludes. […] You read Hafni Says like the smørrebrød (open sandwiches) it describes: in small delectable portions, nodding along to its observational precision, chewing over its subtle, layered flavours, wistfully yearning for more when it’s all over so suddenly.” – Financial Times (UK)

“Hafni Says by Helle Helle is close to perfection […] conversational, acerbic, melancholy and also so full of everyday truths and observations that it is difficult to resist the urge to underline every phrase.” – The Irish Times (IE)

“The delicacy of the comedy, the melodrama of Hafni’s aches and pains, the brief friendships and wild misunderstandings, the lasting mortification of a faux pas from back in the day—only the Danish novelist Helle Helle can make this human and not pathological. […] A striking tale in which capitalization seems too emphatic for precarious living and suffering in a minor, muted key.” – Booklist (US)

“A simple story that contains a complex exploration of self-determination, loneliness, and ordinary luck. […] Over the course of Hafni’s meandering journey, the reader sees her experiment with different models of how to be—the woman who slips on pumps before she teeters into a hotel, the woman who lingers in a bare-bones hostel for the pleasure of her simple room, the woman pursued by ’eternal embarrassment’ for social gaffes committed in the distant past. All of these, and more, are Hafni.” – Kirkus Reviews (US)

“In this wry, piquant book, a kind of road novel without epiphany or climactic resolution, what matters isn’t what happens as such but the ways in which sensitivity and self-consciousness can crowd and shape a person’s life… Hafni Says insists on patient attention and rewards it on every page. What insights there might be, for Hafni or for us, come briefly, almost surreptitiously. Life itself goes on.” – The Saturday Paper (AU)

The novel has been sold in 11 markets and was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2024.