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ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME | NORDIC BOOK CLUB ONLINE

March 11—6:00 pm7:00 pm

On the Calculation of Volume Book Jacket

Read and discuss literature with our Nordic Book Club Online! On March 11, we’ll be discussing the first volume of Solvej Balle’s speculative fiction septology On the Calculation of Volume, winner of the 2022 Nordic Council Literature Prize and now out in translation by Barbara J. Haveland.

Tara Selter, the heroine of On the Calculation of Volume, has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November 18th 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 18th of November.”)

Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her memories of the past light up inside the text like old-fashioned flash bulbs.

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Details

Date:
March 11
Time:
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm