On the Calculation of Volume

Longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award in Translation

Tara Selter has fallen out of time. In On the Calculation of Volume, the first volume in Solvej Balle’s extraordinary seven-part novel, Tara wakes each morning to find the same day unfolding again and again: November 18th, repeated endlessly.

Now 122 days into this strange, recursive loop, Tara knows every second before it happens—the exact moment a blackbird will sing, the instant the rain begins. Days, weeks, seasons no longer pass. Her world has stilled, though the rest of it—her confused and aging husband, a past slipping out of reach—seems to continue on without her.

Trapped in this frozen sliver of time, Tara confronts not just isolation and mystery, but the growing weight of her own insignificance. “That’s how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November,” she observes. And yet, with each iteration of the day, she becomes more attuned to its minute details, its hidden rhythms, its quiet poetry.

Solvej Balle reinvents the concept of the ‘stuck day’ with hypnotic precision and philosophical depth. Flashbacks flare like vintage bulbs within the text, offering sharp glimpses of a life once whole. What emerges is a meditation on memory, repetition, love, and the quiet ache of being suspended in time.