An extract from On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J. Haveland
In the first part of Solvej Balle’s epic septology, Tara Selter has slipped out of time. Every morning, she wakes up to the 18th of November
An interview with Solvej Balle and Barbara J. Haveland, author and translator of On the Calculation of Volume I
With On the Calculation of Volume I shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025, we spoke to its author and translator about time-loop stories, classical Japanese prose and their favourite Booker-nominated books
Solvej Balle
The inspirations behind On the Calculation of Volume I
My book is just another time-loop story: A woman, Tara Selter, is trapped in the 18th of November. In a way, I didn’t want to tell this story. I got the idea in 1987 – it probably sprang from some reflections about time after writing my first book, mixed with what I was reading at the time – but the more I thought about it, the more foolish the idea seemed to me, even more so after the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day came out. I tried to get rid of the idea, but it kept coming back, so in the end I realised that the only way out was to write it. The idea generated so much material that I just wanted to explore it.
(I must admit that when I finally saw Groundhog Day, I actually liked it – it was fun, and it also felt as if someone had helped me with research by trying out some of the roads I did not want to take. Since then, I have really enjoyed looking at different time-loop stories. Each has its own philosophy of time, space, material, memory, the mind, etc.)
How I wrote the book
It took a long time. From 1987 until now (I am currently working on books 6 and 7). The first book came out in Danish in 2020. I think there are many reasons why it took so long. I had to wait for the main character to develop, and I think I had to get older to understand her. For a long time, I just wrote small fragments and notes, but around 1999 or 2000 I wrote the first part of what is now book 1. It has been rewritten many times, but the core has somehow remained through all the rewritings. Obstacles: many. Doubts: a lot. I am not sure I ever felt I was writing something special. Of course, it always feels special when you see a text developing into something that feels right, but I think one is more aware of the obstacles and possible solutions than trying to judge what it might look like from the outside.
The book that made me fall in love with reading
A Danish children’s book called The Blue-Eyed Pussy in English, which I first encountered in kindergarten. It is about a cat with blue eyes who is constantly told by the yellow-eyed cats that it is not a real cat, but in the end they have to admit that it is. A moral tale in seven chapters with a lot of repetition. I still know it by heart. It said ‘novel’ on the front – I remember asking my mother what a novel was, but I don’t remember her answer.
The book that made me want to become a writer
Probably Michel Tournier’s Friday (Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique). I had been reading a lot of books about people on uninhabited islands, and after I had written a paper about ‘robinsonades’ in high school, my teacher handed me Tournier’s book, which had just been translated into Danish. I think what I liked about it was how much thinking there was in it – but I think it was very male-centered. I might still think that, but I haven’t re-read it.
Solvej Balle
© Sarah Hartvigsen JunckerThe book that changed the way I think about the world
I once got an anthology of Japanese classical prose – with extracts from, among other things, The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji. I found it amazing that these women, who lived 1,000 years ago in Japan and had totally different backgrounds from mine, were so easy to relate to. Maybe it was just literature’s renowned ability to cross cultural borders, but I think my world somehow grew bigger.
A book originally written in Danish that I’d recommend to English-language readers
That would have to be Inger Christensen’s Alphabet. It must have been hard to translate, but it does exist in English. It is just great poetry – asking you to open your intellect as well as your senses and imagination.
The Booker-nominated book everyone should read
The thing I like about longlists is that they contain books that are so different. I probably would not recommend one book to everyone but rather that people go into a bookstore or a library and read the beginning of all the nominated books they can find and bring the one home that says pling from page one.
But it could also be nice if everybody read Doris Lessing’s The Sirian Experiments – or even better, her whole Canopus in Argos series.
I can imagine a version of Planet Earth where everyone just sits down reading those books for as long as it takes, doing nothing else except whatever is needed to stay alive and keep others alive when doing it.
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
The more I thought about it, the more foolish the idea seemed to me, even more so after the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day came out
Barbara J. Haveland
The inspiration and process behind my translation of On the Calculation of Volume I
Solvej Balle’s work is an inspiration in itself. It’s spare and taut. There’s nothing superfluous here, nothing random. Every word is weighed, every phrase and sentence finely honed. The challenge for the translator is to produce a faithful and felicitous rendering in English of her distilled prose. The pleasure lies in working closely with the author to achieve this end – always a happy and fruitful collaboration.
I regularly sent her drafts containing my notes and queries and she sent me her replies. This always results in an excellent, ongoing dialogue which has taken us off down many paths! I first worked with Solvej in the early Nineties when I translated her highly acclaimed first book Ifølge loven (According to the Law) and have been a huge fan of hers ever since. As soon as I read the first book in the On the Calculation of Volume septology, I knew I had to translate it – and, happily, Solvej also wanted me to do it.
From start to delivery of the translation probably took about eight months. I work through a book in stages, taking sections – usually of around 20-30 pages – through several drafts, bringing each of them up to a certain standard: not finished by any means, but starting to shape up. Once I have several sections all up to the same standard I’ll go back to the beginning and work through these again: tidying, refining and incorporating any changes resulting from discussions with the author. I’ll work through the rest of the book in this same way. Once I have a good draft of the full translation – i.e. one which reads pretty well but is still not ready for delivery to the publisher – I go back to the beginning to go through it again (and again!), tying the whole thing together, making any last alterations, checking that there are no inconsistencies, no words, phrases or lines inadvertently missed out etc. The aim being to arrive at a seamless English translation.
Throughout this process I will be in contact with the author, sending them my notes and queries and discussing various points arising from the text. Some authors want to be more involved, but these are always fruitful discussions.
The book that made me fall in love with reading
Too many to mention, but the first books that I clearly remember reading are The Hobbit and Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I was seven at the time. I still have these books (my original copies) on my bookshelf and have returned to them again and again over the years. My dad fed me books – he realised that Penguin’s wonderful Puffin and Peacock lists were a guarantee of quality fiction for children and teenagers and would bring me bundles of them home from the bookshop. For me there was nothing better than a pile of new paperbacks.
The book that made me want to become a translator
Peter Høeg’s Foretællinger om natten (Tales of the Night) was not the first book by him that I translated, but it was the one which moved me to contact his publisher, Merete Ries of Rosinante publishing house, to ask if I might translate an extract from it and send it to her. I had translated a few things before, but nothing of this scope or calibre. On the basis of the extract from Tales of the Night I was asked to translate Høeg’s De måske egnede (Borderliners), which marked the start proper of my career as a literary translator.
Barbara J. Haveland
The book I’m reading at the moment
I have just started reading Andrew O’Hagan’s Our Fathers and already I’m aware of being swept along by it. There’s an irresistible urgency to the narrative, so much so that already I’ve found myself deliberately slowing down my page-turning to take a breath! I read O’Hagan’s Mayflies some years ago (it’s set in my home town of Irvine in Ayrshire) and have more recently been blown away by Caledonian Road, so I’m now gradually working through his backlist.
A work of translated fiction I’d recommend to English-language readers
Jan Kjærstad is one of Norway’s finest writers and one whose works deserves to reach a much wider audience. His trilogy about the rise and fall of Jonas Wergeland, a (fictional) television personality, is not only a fascinating, multi-faceted portrait of one man, and an intriguing whodunnit; over the three volumes – Forføreren (The Seducer), Erobreren (The Conqueror) and Oppdageren (The Discoverer) Kjærstad also presents an insightful social and cultural history of modern Norway.
The Booker-nominated book everyone should read
It has to be Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, which won the Booker in 2020. It’s such a powerful and moving novel, honest, tender and full of love. Stuart’s language is so fresh and original and the social and political backdrop utterly authentic. I lived in Glasgow from 1972 to 1988 and still call it home. Shuggie’s and Agnes’s story spoke directly to me.
Why is translated fiction so appealing to a new generation of English-language readers?
I’m not sure I’m qualified to comment on this, but one explanation might be that these days English-speaking readers have become more used, through streaming, to watching foreign series and films with subtitles and have thus become more aware of and open to the idea of literature in translation. And then, of course, there was the Nordic noir wave of the Nineties and since, to which several of my excellent translator colleagues have contributed.
Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan
As soon as I read the first book in the On the Calculation of Volume septology, I knew I had to translate it
