The Shakespeare and Company Interview Solvej Balle on Time, Wonder, and Writing the Impossible *International Booker Prize Shortlist*
In this episode recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, celebrated Danish author Solvej Balle returns to the bookshop she once called home to discuss her monumental literary project On the Calculation of Volume. The novel’s protagonist, Tara Selter, finds herself reliving November 18th—again and again—opening up a profound meditation on time, memory, isolation, and human existence. Balle reflects on the decades-long journey of crafting this work, the philosophical underpinnings of time loops, and the quiet radicalism of writing it from a female perspective. Touching on everything from Ulysses to Groundhog Day, to quantum physics, she shares how her character emerged through a process of deep listening and experimentation. Tara's attempts to replicate seasons and find meaning through repetition prompt larger questions about how we process time, our relationships, and the rituals that structure our lives. Balle reveals how a “stupid idea” turned into a seven-volume epic currently shortlisted for the International Booker Prize—and how writing it has transformed her own understanding of life, aging, and narrative possibility.
Buy On the Calculation of Volume: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/on-the-calculation-of-volume-i
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Solvej Balle was born in 1962, made her debut in 1986 with Lyrefugl, and
went on to write the highly-acclaimed According to the Law: Four Accounts of Mankind (praised by Publishers Weekly for its blend of “sly humor, bleak vision, and terrified sense of the absurd with a tacit intuition that the world has a meaning not yet fathomed”). She’s also published a book on art theory, a political memoir, and two books of short prose. On the Calculation of Volume expands the possibilities of the novel and heralds the arrival of a major literary artist.
Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-england
Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w
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