On the Calculation of Volume II by Solvej Balle

The second volume of the landmark European masterpiece about a woman lost in time.

I was sure that through careful listening you could solve any problem that might arise. If you really listened. The great questions in life. Everything.

Tara Selter is searching for a way back into time.

A year has passed, but Tara still wakes up to the same newspapers, and the same blank faces when she explains that she has seen this all before. Until one morning, she boards a train and finds herself in a new day. It is still the eighteenth of November, but the faces are different, the weather is colder.

She realises that she has found a way out of her endless autumn. By moving across Europe rather than through time, she can collect the ingredients for the seasons: the thin film of ice on puddles, the fresh spring breeze, the blazing summer sun. As she travels, she begins to hope for a new future, one that will run in parallel to the eighteenth of November, one that she must build for herself.

Translated by Barbara J. Haveland.