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Episode details

Radio 4,19 Apr 2026,28 mins

Solvej Balle

Take Four Books

Available for over a year

Presented by James Crawford Take Four Books speaks to the writer Solvej Balle from her home on an island off the coast of Denmark about her latest instalment of the 'On the Calculation of Volume' series. The novels tell the story of Tara Selter, an antiquarian bookseller who wakes up one morning to find she is endlessly reliving the same day: the 18th of November. Solvej's influences for this episode are all Danish. She chose: Stories About Tacit by Cecil Bødker from 2016, which is a novel about social outcasts who form a reluctant alliance on an abandoned farm in 1850s Denmark; Inger Christensen's poetry collection, Alphabet, from 1981; and a book of philosophy first published in the year 1843 - Either/Or - by the man often described as the 'father of existentialism' - Søren Kierkegaard. Producer: Dominic Howell Editor: Gillian Wheelan This is a BBC Audio Scotland production.

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