On the Calculation of Volume III

The third volume in Solvej Balle's landmark European masterpiece about a woman lost in time.

I have met someone who remembers. Yesterday. That is to say, I met him yesterday. But he remembers yesterday, too. He remembers that we met yesterday.

Tara Selter has lived the eighteenth of November 1,143 times when she notices a break in the pattern: a man has changed his shirt. The man is Henry Dale, and he remembers all the days that have come before. He knows that time has fallen out of joint. Now they are two of a kind – trapped in the eighteenth of November, but no longer alone.

Together they learn to share their present; their voices grow hoarse recounting their small battles against it and their bewilderment at the disintegrating world. Henry sees things differently to Tara: he does not think that time will put itself back together and he does not think that the future will come around. But he makes her realise that she is no longer the same person she was before this fault in time. And he makes her believe that there may be others to find within it.

About the Author

Solvej Balle was born in 1962 and made her debut in 1986 with Lyrefugl (Lyrebird.) She went on to write one of the 1990s' most acclaimed works of Danish literature, IfA¸lge loven (1993) ('According to the Law: Four Accounts of Mankind', translated by Barbara Haveland.) On Calculation of Volume is Solvej Balle's return to literary stardom after nearly 30 years.

Jennifer Russell and Sophia Hersi Smith are translators from the Danish based in Copenhagen. Their translations include My Work by Olga Ravn and There Lives a Young Girl In Me Who Will Not Die by Tove Ditlevsen. In 2020, they were awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation's Translation Prize. Their translations have appeared in the Paris Review, the New York Times, Granta, Asymptote, and on stage.