
Solvej Balle writes stories that stop time and win awards
Meet the Ærø-based author and SDU alumna, who may win the Booker Prize, a major international literary award, tomorrow for Book 1 in the seven-volume novel On the Calculation of Volume. Read here why philosophy is integral to her novels.
Meeting Solvej Balle is like exploring language, art and existence all at the same time. The twists and turns in the conversation constantly take you by surprise.
On the other hand, you get to go deep into the big questions as well as into every nook and cranny of life.
This is also more or less how life as a writer has unfolded for the 63-year-old author and MA in Philosophy from the University of Southern Denmark, who writes world literature from her house on Ærø.
Philosophy and literature have been Solvej Balle’s faithful companions throughout her life – and of course in her work on the major novel series On the Calculation of Volume. Although she is still writing volume six of seven in total, the series that has already secured her the Nordic Council Literature Prize and the Grand Prize of the Danish Academy, among others.
And now the first volume in the series is also a contender for The International Booker Prize – one of the largest international literary prizes in the UK.
Passed her philosophical driving test
Solvej Balle vividly remembers how her mother called her ‘a little philosopher’ when her nine-year-old self insisted on explaining something important to her busy mother.
- I probably got a sense early on that if you explain something well enough, you will be understood. Her interest in philosophy has always been there, says Solvej Balle.
But interest was not enough for the philosophising author. So while she was researching and writing her major novel series, she also took a master’s degree in Philosophy at the University of Southern Denmark.
- It was very important for me to get my master’s degree. It’s my philosophical driver’s license, and as an author, I thought I’d been driving around without a licence long enough. In fact, I often dreamed that I was driving without a license and was afraid of being discovered. Those dreams stopped completely when I graduated, says Solvej Balle and explains how she uses philosophy in her books:
- My degree in philosophy means that as a writer I’m walking on two legs rather than hobbling around on one leg. It gives me the opportunity to think further about something or leave things open. In my writing process, it is important to know what others have thought and said before. I have to know the landscape that my characters find themselves in when they discuss philosophical topics in the books. Which they often do.
Why do humans create art?
And then Solvej Balle turns the conversation in a new direction – to educational policy. Because she really believes that something is missing from the Danish educational landscape:
- We need a comprehensive education programme in the philosophy of art for all the people from the artistic and creative education programmes and the academic programmes studying the arts. It would really raise the bar and give us far more qualified discussions of art if we could reflect more coherently on why we humans create art.
That is precisely why Solvej Balle took matters into her own hands and studied philosophy alongside her writing.
- I don’t really know how to do something without reflecting on it, so I pieced together my own education in art philosophy. Because honestly, it’s strange that we humans create art. Why do we even want to embark on such a thing?
Stories stop time
There are undoubtedly many different answers to this question, and during her philosophical studies, Solvej Balle has also found her answers.
Answers that can be found between the lines of her award-winning novel series and which received harsh reviews when she wrote the book The Art of the Impossible on art theory many years ago.
- As I see it, we humans tell stories to come to terms with the physical world and the limiting fact that we do not live forever. Stories are our way of stopping time; we can peacefully close the book when the prince and princess live happily ever after – we don’t have to get to the divorce, Solvej Balle explains and elaborates:
- In art, we generate a world that does not exist, so that we can relate to how we deal with the real world. I don’t think that art in itself is insight – and I don’t think that’s why we have it – but it can contain insight in many forms.
Award for nerds in the corners
Insights about time and existence have reached far and wide since 2020, when Solvej Balle published the first part of the novel series about Tara who is trapped in 18 November and wakes up to the same day every day.
Because the publication has catapulted Solvej Balle onto the big literary scene from her otherwise quiet writing life in her house on Ærø. Today, On the Calculation of Volume has been sold for publication in 30 languages.
And this week, the interest in Solvej Balle and her books will undoubtedly take another step up when she and her translator Barbara J. Haveland compete to win The International Booker Prize.
However, Solvej Balle is looking forward to meeting the other authors more than finding out who this year’s winner of the Prize will be.
- For me, the Prize means that recognition is given to people who have been engrossed in their work for a very long time, far away from everything. It’s an award for us nerds hidden away in our corners, and I’m really looking forward to meeting my colleagues who have also been nominated. We’re going to have a ball.
The International Booker Prize will be awarded on Tuesday 20 May at Tate Modern in London. The winner of the Prize will receive almost DKK 500,000 – which is to be divided between the author and the translator.
Read more about the Booker Prize (https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/international/2025)
Solvej Balle in brief
Born 1962 in Bovrup, Southern Jutland, grew up in Odense and lives in Marstal on Ærø.
Debuted in 1986 with the novel Lyrefugl (Lyrebird) and has since then written flash fiction, novels, a book on art theory and a memoir essay.
Studied at Forfatterskolen (the Danish Authors’ Academy) 1987–1989 and received her master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Southern Denmark in 2018.
Was awarded the Danish Arts Foundation’s lifetime grant in 2009.
In 2020 and 2021, she published the first three critically acclaimed volumes in the novel series On the Calculation of Volume.
Has been showered with awards in recent years: The Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2022, Kritikerprisen (the Danish Critics Prize for Literature) in 2023, the Grand Prize of the Danish Academy in 2024, Distinguished Alumnus at SDU in 2024 and was Thott of the Year in the Danish Philosophical Association in 2025.
She publishes her own novel series On the Calculation of Volume at her publishing house Pelagraf.