Hafni Says

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.

Praise for they by Helle Helle:

‘Helle Helle will enchant readers…the luminous presence she brings to the present tense, the terse transfiguration of the ordinary into poetic strangeness.’ – Sydney Morning Herald ‘Book of the Week’

‘Precise, controlled and unforgettable…a book that begs the reader to slow down and take notice.’ – The Guardian

‘Strangely, wonderfully absorbing…Slow your heart, slow your attention span – you’ll be mesmerised.’ – The Telegraph

‘Sweetly oriented to a disciplined, detached way of telling, Helle balances glassy brilliance with radiant feeling.’ – The Saturday Paper

‘Whimsical, charming and tremendously moving…The patience of the narrative and steadiness of observation becomes a way of holding onto things, of staying with events that have already happened or are yet to come.’ – ABC Arts