If you’ve heard about Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume I, longlisted for this year’s International Booker prize, you may have experienced a sensation that is central to the Danish writer’s brand of philosophical speculative fiction: deja vu.
In Balle’s five-book opus (of a planned septology), the first three of which won the prestigious Nordic Council literature prize in 2022, someone wakes up to find they are reliving the same day over and over. Their partner, family, neighbours: they all experience this day for the first time in their life. Only the protagonist has been there before. That person is a woman called Tara rather than a man called Phil, and the day is 18 November rather than 2 February, but the plot resemblance to Groundhog Day is striking.
