On the Calculation of Volume III

Solvej Balle, Sophia Hersi Smith, Jennifer Russell

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English

Faber & Faber
18 November 2025

Fiction & Literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Fiction in translation; Philosophy

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.

By: Solvej Balle
Translated by: Sophia Hersi Smith, Jennifer Russell
Imprint: Faber & Faber
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: Main
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 135mm,
ISBN: 9780571383429
ISBN 10: 0571383424
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 18 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

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, IfÃ¸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.

Reviews for On the Calculation of Volume III

'What the best novels can do is open up spaces. And she has opened a space in time, and it is absolutely, absolutely incredible.', Karl Ove Knausgård 'A total explosion; Solvej Balle has blown through to a new dimension of literary exploration.', Nicole Krauss