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Book IV
by Solvej Balle
The fourth installment of Balle's expansive, and highly ambitious On the Calculation of Volume teems with new faces, new people, and voices from every corner of the western world
We're a little more than halfway through Balle's hypnotic, monumental seven-volume novel about a woman set adrift within the walls of November 18th. Balle's riveting project continues to wring ever more fascinating dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal captives. In Book III we saw the addition of a handful of new characters to Tara's world―fellow travelers within November 18th―and now Book IV heralds the arrival of many others, and soon to be even more, roaming uncertainly through the same November day. Could this be the first stirrings of an alternate civilization? The big house in Bremen turns into the headquarters for this growing group of time-trapped individuals. But who are they and what has happened to them? Are they loopers, repeaters, or returners? A brilliant modern spin on the myth of Babel in the Book of Genesis, Book IV asks urgent questions, concerning the naming of things, of people, and of the functions of language itself–must a social movement have a common language in order to exist? Snatches of conversation, argument, and late-night chatter crowd onto the pages of Tara's notebooks. Amid the buzz and excitement of a new social order coming into being, Book IV ends with a sudden, unexpected, and tantalizing cliffhanger that no one―not even Tara, our steady cataloger and cartographer of the endless November day―could have foreseen.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (5/7/2026)
This week I finished Black Messiahs by Steven A Holmes. It was a WWII story from the perspectives of Black brothers who enlisted in the US Army and a dual storyline of a Polish Jew named Daniel. I liked it. Also finished The Secret of Snow by Tina Harnesk. This is about the Sami people of the Nor...
-Anne_Glasgow
2025 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists
Here's the list of the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award finalists. Which have you read and which are standouts? Are there any you'd like to add to your list that you haven't already? Autobiography/Memoir : Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks (Viking) Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy ...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (12/25/2025)
I finished https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/22061/cursed-daughters Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Bathwaite and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I like pondering the question of the curse: Is it real, or does it only impact the women of this family be...
-kim.kovacs
Am I the only person who does this?
...ing is Tuberculosis by John Green Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood A Drop of Corruption (second book in a sci-fi series by Robert Jackson Bennett I like) On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle Flesh by David Szalay Flashlight by Susan Choi Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa The Original by Nell Stevens A Burning by Megha Majumdar Shadowbahn by Stev...
-kim.kovacs
Publishers Weekly Top 10/Top 150
Publishers Weekly just released their top 150 for the year (150? Really? Seems like a lot to me.) Their Top 10: https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/4991/audition Audition by Katie Kitamura The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones Capitalism and Its Critics: A History...
-kim.kovacs
2025 National Book Awards Finalists Announced
Here's the list! Which ones have you read? Which are on your radar? Fiction : Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief Karen Russell, The Antidote Ethan Rutherford, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther Bryan Wa...
-kim.kovacs
What books have you enjoyed so far in 2025, what books are you looking forward to reading?
My best of the first half of 2025: 5⭐️ Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black Black in Blues by Imani Perry Freedom is a Feast by Alejandro Puyana The Puzzle Box by Danielle Trussoni 4.5⭐️ The Power Broker by Robert Caro The Slip by Lucas Schaefer Spell Freedom by Elaine Weiss Fundamentally by Nussaiba...
-Anne_Glasgow
"A speculative novel that, with each new volume, feels ever more intensely about the present. A lively entry in a provocative series, thick with questions about morals and ethics." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Remarkable... This will leave readers counting down the days to the next installment." —Publishers Weekly
"A symphony of voices, kind, curious, various, energetic and possibly healing... Balle's serial novel takes the idea of repetition and uses it to make ancient, impossible problems of time new again. What is astonishing about her novel is the way she makes us see that we have constructed our world so we don't have to think about time's scalding realities." —London Review of Books
This information about On the Calculation of Volume was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Solvej Balle was born in 1962, made her debut in 1986 with Lyrefugl, and she went on to write one of the 1990s' most acclaimed works of Danish literature, 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"). Since then, she's published a book on art theory, Det umuliges kunst, 2005, a political memoir Frydendal og andre gidsler, 2008, and two books of short prose Hvis and Så, published simultaneously in 2013. On the Calculation of Volume is Solvej Balle's major comeback, not just to Danish or Nordic fiction, but―expanding the possibilities of the novel―to all of world literature.
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