On the Calculation of Volume (Book I)

Utterly riveting, Solvej Balles On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) is the grand opening of her speculative fiction septology, winner of the 2022 Nordic Council Literature Prize (Scandinavias most important literary award) for being a masterpiece of its time.A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2024A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF 2024SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURETara 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: Thats 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 volumes gravitational pulla force inverse to its constrictionhas 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 books logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating.Solvej Balles sevenvolume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects. As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balles fiction consists of writing that listens. Reading her is like being caressed by language itself.