Hafni Says

BY Helle Helle

Hafni says: I don’t want to be me.

I want to change who I am.

I don’t know how to change who I am.

Hafni says she’s getting divorced. To celebrate, she sets out across southern Denmark on a smørrebrød tour, to sample Danish classics, open-faced sandwiches and afternoon teas. A month later, she makes a phone call from a rest stop to the novel’s narrator – a main character from Helle Helle’s previous novel they – to explain how she went wrong, and why a trip that was meant to take a week has ended up consuming an entire month. Her storytelling seems to incarnate how Hafni herself digresses – how her past unfolds as one long series of accidents and mishaps, the accumulation of which somehow became the life she is living. Infused with Helle Helle’s subtlety and dark humour, and brought into English in Martin Aitken’s virtuosic translation, Hafni Says explores the desire to be anyone but yourself – and what it means to try to make yourself anew.

Giramondo, 2026