Balle, Solvej
Entry updated 6 January 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1962- ) Danish publisher, editor, translator and author; her first novel Lyrefugl ["Lyrebird"] (1986), a Robinsonade whose protagonist is lost on an Island, verges on the fantastic. She is primarily of sf interest for the multi-volume Om udregning af rumfang (2020-continuing), an ongoing novel whose first two instalments – Om udregning af rumfang I (2020; trans Barbara Haveland as On the Calculation of Volume I 2024) and Om udregning af rumfang II (2020; trans Barbara Haveland as On the Calculation of Volume II 2024) – follow day by day, in intimate and transformative detail, the life of their protagonist, who is caught in a Time Loop, and is destined to relive one day, 18 November of an unspecified year, endlessly. Volume one begins with her 121st awakening in this state of immurement (see Prison), though in dealing with her plight she moves from despair to epiphany and back. In contrast to a Horror in SF film like Groundhog Day (1993), she does not necessarily wake up incarcerated in the same place and time each recurring day, but where she happens to fall asleep; and some she may intermittently retain items she has acquired. In volume two, she takes trains northward then southward, into various venues, exploring the implications of her time-bound but flexible world: in which time is not a line or wheel or river but a container. She is advantaged by the fact that Climate Change is no longer an issue. Eventually, as other "victims" of the same fate are discovered, the smooth gravitas of the tale deepens. Later volumes carry her into further thousands of days, where she and her kith slowly understand the Utopian implication of their fellowship (see also Secret Masters), and of the nature of the archive (see Library) they are amassing on the site of an otherwise emptied university.
Some similarities between On the Calculation of Volume and other Time Loop tales are clear; but the scale and interrogative radiance of Balle's large opus are distinctive. [JC]
Solvej Balle
born Bovrup, Sønderjylland [South Jutland], Denmark: 16 August 1962
works (selected)
- Lyrefugl ["Lyrebird"] (Copenhagen, Denmark: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 1986) [binding unknown/]
- Om udregning af rumfang I (Marstal, Ærø, Denmark: Pelagraf, 2020) [pb/]
- On the Calculation of Volume I (New York: New Directions, 2024) [trans by Barbara J Haveland of the above: pb/Matt Dorfman]
- Om udregning af rumfang II (Marstal, Ærø, Denmark: Pelagraf, 2020) [pb/]
- On the Calculation of Volume II (New York: New Directions, 2024) [trans by Barbara J Haveland of the above: pb/Matt Dorfman]
- Om udregning af rumfang III (Marstal, Ærø, Denmark: Pelagraf, 2021) [pb/]
- Om udregning af rumfang IV (Marstal, Ærø, Denmark: Pelagraf, 2022) [pb/]
- Om udregning af rumfang V (Marstal, Ærø,, Denmark: Pelagraf, 2023) [pb/]
links
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