On the Calculation of Volume II

Winner of the Nordic Council Prize for Literature

The second volume of the Booker-shortlisted masterpiece about one woman's fall through the cracks of time.

'Absolutely, absolutely incredible.' Karl Ove Knausgård
'A total explosion.' Nicole Krauss
'Unforgettable.' Hernan Díaz
'Breathtaking.' Chetna Maroo
'Brilliant.' Jon McGregor
'Absolutely marvellous.' Lauren Groff

Tara Selter is building her own year.

If I want seasons, I will have to build them myself. If I am to have a future, I will have to build it myself. I put the pieces together, little fragments of season and I write it all down.

Tara has been stuck in the 18th of November for over a year's worth of days. She 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.

'How on earth did this book come into being? It's like it has always been here in this world with us, like one feels about the best art.' Sheila Heti