On the Calculation of Volume (Book V)

Solvej Balle

The Danish author Solvej Balle’s experimental opus reframes the tedium of contemporary life as a source of unexpected wonders.

The New York Times

The much anticipated fifth installment of Solvej Balle’s “speculative masterwork” (New York) On the Calculation of Volume, a literary classic in the making

Available Nov 17, 2026

On the Calculation of Volume (Book V)

Fiction by Solvej Balle

Translated from Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell

It’s been a while since Tara Selter was all alone in her repeating November day. It’s been even longer since she was one half of a unit called T&T Selter, an antiquarian book dealership she ran with her beloved husband Thomas. Her hazy days of confusion are behind her, and so are her desperate and doomed attempts to reattach herself to linear time. Tara has begun to settle into a new life, with new habits, and new people, and so have the many other time-trapped individuals who have joined her along the way. And yet we can’t help but wonder whether she and her fellow travelers will ever find their way out of a trap so inexplicable and profound—and will they even still want to? In Balle’s hands the time loop becomes a parable of loss, longing, marital loneliness, and our own mortality. With gradual, breathtaking power, Balle deftly explores a series of existential and philosophical questions, and grapples with the form of the novel itself, charging full steam ahead in reinventing and reinvigorating its possibilities. And now we’ve arrived at the thrilling fifth book of Solvej Balle’s septology. “It’s a sensation.” (The New York Times Magazine).


Buy On the Calculation of Volume (Book V)

Paperback

published: Nov 17, 2026

ISBN:
9780811240383
Price U.S.:
14.95
Trim Size:
5 x 8
Page Count:
208

Ebook

ISBN:
9780811240390

The Danish author Solvej Balle’s experimental opus reframes the tedium of contemporary life as a source of unexpected wonders.

The New York Times

Balle’s series has grown into a cult hit, both in Scandinavia, where the first six of a planned seven books have been released in the original Danish, and, more recently, in the U.S. The novels, composed of Tara’s diary entries, meld metaphysical inquiry with an intimate attention to the natural world and the domestic sphere. Balle’s prose—repetitive, hypnotic, and as balanced as a small plane—sustains an atmosphere of illuminated ordinariness.

Katy Waldman, The New Yorker
Buy On the Calculation of Volume (Book V)