What changes when a traveller sets off to become someone else but cannot leave her old habits behind? That question opens Helle Helle’s Hafni Says, the story of a woman celebrating her divorce with a culinary journey through Denmark. The itinerary is orderly; the emotional destination is not. Instead of promising reinvention, Helle makes room for hesitation, awkward encounters and the persistence of memory.
There is a recent reason to revisit this Danish novel. Martin Aitken’s English translation appeared in Britain and the US in September 2026, and John Self featured it in The Guardian’s translated-fiction roundup on 30 October 2026. The original, Hafni fortæller, was published in Danish in 2023. For international readers, the interesting question is not simply where Hafni goes, but why Helle makes her journey into a conversation.
A road trip made out of a telephone call
Hafni calls from a roadside stop to explain a journey intended to last roughly a week but extended to a month. She has left her marriage and planned a smørrebrød tour. Smørrebrød is Denmark’s tradition of open-faced sandwiches, often assembled on rye bread with carefully arranged toppings. An apparently cheerful food itinerary becomes the setting for a less predictable journey.
This framing makes the telling as important as the events. We receive a retrospective account, not a diary written faithfully at every stop. Someone explaining why a trip went wrong might reveal more through digression and omission than through the bare sequence of events. The difference between a planned route and a telephone story gives a reader something to listen for. In a 2025 interview, Helle herself explains that Hafni’s old friend barely gets a word in, while the identity of the person shaping the retelling remains open to interpretation.
Gutkind’s description of the Danish original places stops across Zealand, Funen and southern Jutland, ending with the South Jutland coffee-table tradition. The places matter, but they are not a checklist for tourists. Meals, rooms and encounters become tests of how Hafni performs ordinary social roles after deciding to change her life.
The importance of small things
Helle’s fiction is associated with sparse dialogue, short scenes and familiar activities that carry disproportionate emotional weight. Minimalism is a useful term if it means attention to omission, rather than a story in which nothing happens. A mundane errand may stand where a confrontation is expected; a pause can reveal more than an explanation.
In its review posted on 6 July 2026, Kirkus Reviews describes Hafni’s carefully arranged trip being disrupted by strangers, mishaps and uncertainty. That suggests a practical reading method. After each episode, ask what happened outwardly and what changed, if anything, in Hafni’s account of herself. An unplanned detour can matter even without a dramatic revelation.
Recent critics do not treat this merely as an amusing holiday. The Guardian’s 30 October review attends to Hafni’s relief at escaping obligations, alongside her fear and uncertainty. The present article is a guide based on publishers’ information and published criticism, not a review claiming an independent reading of the complete novel. Its purpose is to suggest questions to take into the text.
The sandwich tour cannot supply a new personality
Food is an apt framework for a story about changing identity. It offers pleasure and agency, but also rules: how to order, where to sit, when to leave and how to behave with strangers. Hafni can select her destinations without controlling how she feels once she arrives.
Rather than treating smørrebrød as colourful Danish scenery, try reading the meals as occasions when choice meets habit. Hafni chooses travel but is not instantly free of embarrassment or other people’s judgments. A planned lunch, like a planned new life, provides a framework rather than a transformation. That is an interpretive question to test against the novel, not a claim that every sandwich is a fixed symbol.
There may be comedy without cruelty here. An awkward memory can be funny from outside and painful from within. A sympathetic reading need not demand that Hafni become more consistent or mature in a prescribed sequence. Her hesitations are part of the story’s human scale.
What changes in the English title?
Martin Aitken translated Hafni Says from Hafni fortæller. The Danish fortæller denotes telling or narrating; the published English Says sounds unusually immediate. Both point readers towards voice. This is a comparison of verified titles, not a judgment about particular sentences in two editions that have not been compared side by side.
The English paperbacks are distinct editions: Akoya’s UK edition (ISBN 9781836750277, dated 3 September 2026) and New Directions’ US edition (ISBN 9780811239493, published 15 September). Both credit Aitken. Different page counts need not mean different translations. Always check details against the copy being discussed.
Notice how the narrator’s pauses, explanations and shifts in subject shape your impression. When a person tells a story about themselves, the account is necessarily selective. The pleasure of this kind of fiction lies partly in what a listener—or reader—must infer.
Where should an English-language reader begin?
1. Hafni Says. Start here if episodic fiction, road trips or awkward self-discovery appeal to you. The UK Akoya paperback (2026, ISBN 9781836750277) and US New Directions paperback (2026, ISBN 9780811239493) are translated by Martin Aitken. Read several short sections together, then consider how the speaker connects incidents that initially seem unrelated.
2. they. This offers a different kind of quiet tension: a mother and teenage daughter in the Danish town of Rødby, with illness pressing on ordinary routines. The Akoya UK paperback (February 2026, ISBN 9781836750031) was also translated by Martin Aitken. Compare how each book handles the things its characters leave unsaid.
3. This Should Be Written in the Present Tense. For an earlier variation on uncertainty, meet Dorte, a young woman whose life slips away from expected plans. The UK Vintage paperback (2015, ISBN 9780099587477) credits Martin Aitken. It offers a way to explore Helle’s restrained style outside the Hafni story.
For background, see Litteraturnet’s Danish-language Helle Helle introduction, its English guide to Danish short fiction and its Danish essay on writers in translation. These provide context without requiring a chronological reading of Helle’s novels.
A journey can give someone a new itinerary without supplying a new self. That is why Hafni Says looks especially rewarding for readers prepared to pause and attend to the small things. The important distance may be the one between Hafni’s wish to change and the story she can actually tell about herself.
Sources and further reading
John Self, translated-fiction roundup (The Guardian, 30 October 2026); Kirkus Reviews, Hafni Says (online 6 July 2026); Akoya, Hafni says (UK English edition); New Directions, Hafni Says (US English edition); Saxo, Hafni fortæller (Danish original, 2023); Akoya, they; Penguin/Vintage, This Should Be Written in the Present Tense.
Photo: Hreinn Gudlaugsson / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original image dimensions retained.
