On the Calculation of Volume (Book I): Shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize
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4.0 • 22 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Utterly riveting, Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) is the grand opening of her speculative fiction septology, winner of the 2022 Nordic Council Literature Prize (Scandinavia’s most important literary award) for being “a masterpiece of its time.”
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2024
A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE
Tara Selter, the heroine of On the Calculation of Volume, has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November eighteenth repeats itself endlessly. We meet Tara on her 122nd November 18th: she no longer experiences the changes of days, weeks, months, or seasons. She finds herself in a lonely new reality without being able to explain why: how is it that she wakes every morning into the same day, knowing to the exact second when the blackbird will burst into song and when the rain will begin? Will she ever be able to share her new life with her beloved and now chronically befuddled husband? And on top of her profound isolation and confusion, Tara takes in with pain how slight a difference she makes in the world. (As she puts it: “That’s how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November.”)
Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs.
The first volume’s gravitational pull—a force inverse to its constriction—has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating.
Solvej Balle’s seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects. As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balle’s fiction consists of writing that listens. “Reading her is like being caressed by language itself.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Balle (According to the Law: Four Accounts of Mankind) launches a speculative septology with this astounding chronicle of a rare book dealer's struggle over the course of one year as she wakes up each morning only to repeat the same day. The trouble begins during a trip to Paris, where Tara Selter has traveled on November 17 from the home in northern France she shares with her husband and business partner, Thomas, with plans to return on the 19th. On the 18th, she calls Thomas with an update, then badly burns her hand on a radiator. She nurses the wound, and after waking up the next morning in her hotel room, she discovers from the newspaper and her cellphone that the date hasn't changed. When she gets home, Thomas believes she's returned a day early. The next morning, and each morning after that, she tries to explain to Thomas what's happened, as he doesn't remember. Among the stunning qualities of Balle's brilliant narrative is the way it suspends judgment, simultaneously sustaining the possibility that Tara has gone insane and that she really is caught in a "rift in time." There are no easy answers in this deeply mysterious tale. Readers won't be able to look away.
Customer Reviews
Interesting!
A decent read, but not prize worthy. A different take on Groundhog Day exploring, among other things, the repetitiveness of daily living and loneliness of living together. Can’t imagine reading all seven volumes!
So good
Mesmerising, so well written, and relatable when you have depression
A waste of time
Ugh