On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)
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- £6.49
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- £6.49
Publisher Description
“A literary phenomenon nearly forty years in the making, and a speculative masterwork” (New York Magazine), Balle’s epic On the Calculation of Volume in Book III introduces new thrills to the adventures of Tara Selter’s endless November day
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE
In the marvelous third installment of Balle’s “astonishing” (The Washington Post) septology, Tara’s November 18th transforms when she discovers that she is no longer alone in her endless autumnal day. For she has met someone who remembers, and who knows as well as she does that “it is autumn, but that we’re not heading into winter. That spring and summer will not follow. That the reds and yellows of the trees are here to stay. That yesterday doesn’t mean the seventeenth of November, that tomorrow means the eighteenth, and that the nineteenth is a day we may never see.” Where Book I and II focused on a single woman’s involuntary journey away from her life and her loved ones and into the chasm of time, Book III brings us back into the realm of companionship, with all its thrills, odd quirks, and a sense of mutual bewilderment at having to relearn how to exist alongside others in a shared reality. And then of course, what of Tara’s husband Thomas, still sitting alone day after day, entirely unawares, in their house in Clarion-sous-Bois, waiting for his wife to return? Blending poetry and philosophical inquiry with rich reflections on our discombobulating times, Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume asks us to consider: What is a single person’s responsibility to humanity and to the preservation of this world?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the ingenious third installment of Balle's septology, Danish rare book dealer Tara Selter is still trapped in the 18th of November. However, she now finds that she's not the only one stuck in time. At a lecture on Roman grain and rye in Dusseldorf, she encounters Henry Dale, a Norwegian sociologist who, finding that his time seems infinite, has devoted himself to learning. Tara and Henry promptly spend the next 200 days together, comparing notes on their shared experience ("We talk about the unreliability of things, the nightly transition, our bewilderment, and the little battles fought against the phenomena of the eighteenth of November"). Encouraged that "there's a future out there somewhere," Tara returns to her husband, Thomas, and tries to adjust to the fact that each morning, he has no memory of their time together the day before. But she's thrust back into the mysteries of November 18 when a manic 17-year-old girl named Olga Periti approaches her to say that she, too, is stuck, and she needs Tara's help finding her missing companion, Ralf Kern, who's also stuck in November 18. As Tara, Henry, and Olga search for Ralf, each tries to come to terms with the knowledge that if nothing can ever get better, they're "heading toward death in a world that has come to a standstill." Endlessly fascinating, supple, and tenderly human, Balle's masterpiece reaches new heights.
