{"title":"Danish Authors","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"on-the-calculation-of-volume-book-i-solvej-balle","title":"On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) - Solvej Balle","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTara Selter, the heroine of On the Calculation of Volume, has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November eighteenth repeats itself endlessly. We meet Tara on her 122nd November 18th: she no longer experiences the changes of days, weeks, months, or seasons. She finds herself in a lonely new reality without being able to explain why: how is it that she wakes every morning into the same day, knowing to the exact second when the blackbird will burst into song and when the rain will begin? Will she ever be able to share her new life with her beloved and now chronically befuddled husband? And on top of her profound isolation and confusion, Tara takes in with pain how slight a difference she makes in the world. (As she puts it: “That’s how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November.”)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBalle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first volume’s gravitational pull―a force inverse to its constriction―has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSolvej Balle’s seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects. As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balle’s fiction consists of writing that listens. “Reading her is like being caressed by language itself.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e--\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSolvej Balle \u003c\/strong\u003ewas 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.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarbara J. Haveland (born 1951) \u003c\/strong\u003eis a Scottish literary translator, resident in Copenhagen. She translates fiction, poetry and drama from Danish and Norwegian to English. She has translated works by many leading Danish and Norwegian writers, both classic and contemporary, including Henrik Ibsen, Peter Høeg, Linn Ullmann and Carl Frode Tiller.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Book Archive","offers":[{"title":"New - Paperback","offer_id":50230100033853,"sku":"","price":24.5,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0709\/0831\/3917\/files\/71BLQx3Uk_L._SL1500.jpg?v=1745340256"},{"product_id":"on-the-calculation-of-volume-book-ii-solvej-balle-copy","title":"On the Calculation of Volume (Book II) - Solvej Balle","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eTara Selter’s epic journey through November 18th continues in Book II of the masterly\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eOn the Calculation of Volume\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003efrom one of Scandinavia’s most beloved writers.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first year of November eighteenth is coming to a close, and Tara Selter has returned to her hotel room in Paris, the place where it all began. As if perched at the edge of a precipice, she readies herself to leap into November nineteenth.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBook II of Solvej Balle’s astounding seven-part series \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eOn the Calculation of Volume\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e beautifully expands on the speculative premise of Book I, drawing us further into the maze of time, where space yawns open, as if suddenly gaining a new dimension, extending into ever more fined-grained textures. Within this new reality, our senses and the tactility of things grows heightened: sounds, smells, sights, objects come suddenly alive, as if the world had begun whispering to us in a new language.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAnd yet as the world announces itself anew, Tara’s own sense of self is eroding, making her wonder just which bits of her are really left intact? “It is the Tara Selter with hopes and dreams who has fallen out of the picture, been thrown off the world, run over the edge, been poured out, carried off down the stream of eighteenths of November, lost, evaporated, swept out to sea.” She begins to think of herself as a relic of the past, as something or someone leftover, similar to the little Roman coin she carries around in her pocket, without a purpose or a place.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDesperate to recover a sense of herself within time, Tara decides to head north by train in search of winter, but soon she turns south in pursuit of spring, as she tries to grasp on to durational time through seasonal variations. Amazingly, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eOn the Calculation of Volume Book II\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is all movement and motion―taking us through the European countries of the North and the South, through seasons, and languages―a beautiful travelogue that is also a love letter to our vanishing world. To be continued.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e--\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSolvej Balle \u003c\/strong\u003ewas 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.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarbara J. Haveland (born 1951) \u003c\/strong\u003eis a Scottish literary translator, resident in Copenhagen. She translates fiction, poetry and drama from Danish and Norwegian to English. She has translated works by many leading Danish and Norwegian writers, both classic and contemporary, including Henrik Ibsen, Peter Høeg, Linn Ullmann and Carl Frode Tiller.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Book Archive","offers":[{"title":"New - Paperback","offer_id":50255033401661,"sku":"","price":24.5,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0709\/0831\/3917\/files\/51JXS9IuUfL._SL1200.jpg?v=1746127516"},{"product_id":"christmas-with-hans-christian-andersen-bargain","title":"Christmas with Hans Christian Andersen (Bargain)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis stunning chapbook—perfect reading for the Christmas holidays—includes three classic winter tales by Hans Christian “The Little Match-Girl,” “The Fir-Tree,” and “The Snow Man.” \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e--\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHans Christian Andersen\u003c\/strong\u003e (often referred to in Scandinavia as H.C. Andersen) was a Danish author and poet. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories — called eventyr, or \"fairy-tales\" — express themes that transcend age and nationality.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Book Archive","offers":[{"title":"Bargain - Mass Market Paperback","offer_id":50778318405949,"sku":null,"price":5.5,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0709\/0831\/3917\/files\/811YQOY87oL._SL1500.jpg?v=1758752873"}],"url":"https:\/\/thebookarchive.ca\/collections\/danish-authors.oembed","provider":"The Book Archive","version":"1.0","type":"link"}