The time loop story, in which characters repeatedly relive the same span of time, has become synonymous with the 1993 film Groundhog Day, but the idea has much older roots. In PD Ouspensky’s 1915 novel Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, the feckless Osokin is given the chance to live his life over again, only to find himself making all the same mistakes. Like Groundhog Day’s insufferable Phil Connors, Osokin can change nothing without changing himself.
Solvej Balle’s much-lauded series On the Calculation of Volume takes a very different approach. She first began working on the idea decades ago, several years before Groundhog Day was released. The film, she says, “helped me with research by trying out some of the roads I did not want to take”. The books, five so far with two more planned, have proved a literary sensation in her native Denmark, with the first three volumes together scooping the 2022 Nordic Council Literature prize, the highest literary honour in Scandinavia. This is the third to be published in English this year; the first was shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker prize.
