Published in 2020, ‘Om udregning af rumfang I, II og III‘ is a trilogy of novels by Danish author Solvej Balle that won the 2022 ‘Nordic Council Literature Prize‘. Balle was born in 1962 and made her debut in 1986 with ‘Lyrefugl’ (‘Lyre Bird’, not translated into English), and she went on to write one of the 1990s’ most acclaimed works of Danish literature, ‘Ifølge loven’ (1993) (‘According to the Law: Four Accounts of Mankind’). Since then there have been only a few publications: a book on art theory ‘Det umuliges kunst’ (‘The Art of the Impossible’, 2005), a political memoir ‘Frydendal og andre gidsler’ (‘Frydendal and other hostages’, 2008) and two books of short prose ‘Hvis’ (‘If’) and ‘Så’ (‘Then’), both published simultaneously in 2013. ‘Om udregning af rumfang‘ is Solvej Balle’s big comeback: the main character, Tara Selter, has involuntarily stepped off the train of time in this large-scale prose work . In her world, 18 November repeats itself endlessly: she no longer experiences the changes of weeks, months or seasons and the people around her do not age, so they naturally find it difficult to understand Tara’s new and rather remarkable reality. This gap in experience becomes a stroke of literary genius as it asks fundamental questions about what our individual experiences of time and space do to our lives and society. So far, three of a planned series of seven volumes about Tara’s dislocation from time have been published: they already form a closely coherent whole, which expands in new and unpredictable ways within each volume. Solvej Balle allows the reader to relive time, not least the present, and its inherently competing perspectives on themes such as growth, activism and gender. Through the work, we realise that our present is a common concern, even if we sometimes live in our own “bubbles”. The prize is awarded to the first three of a planned series of seven volumes about Tara Selter’s dislocation from time. With ‘Om udregning af rumfang’, Solvej Balle delivers a timely masterpiece of its time, a comeback not just to Danish and Nordic fiction, but to European fiction in general.
