transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Spring always feels like a reset. Clearing things out, simplifying what you don't need. Apple Card is built with that same idea in mind. No annual fee, no late fees, and no foreign transaction fees. No fees, period. Get started and apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.49% to 27.74% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of January 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or at card.apple.com. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

Speaker 2:
[00:36] Hello, I'm Gilbert Cruz and this is The Book Review from The New York Times. Today, I want you to imagine a scenario. You wake up one morning and you start to go about your day as you do every day and an eerie feeling begins to arise. Everything seems familiar. Too familiar. Eventually, a realization starts to creep into your mind. Is it possible you were reliving yesterday? You go through the day, the day passes, you go to sleep, quote, tomorrow arrives and it is the same day yet again. And then it is the same day yet again. Somehow, you've become stuck in time.

Speaker 3:
[01:22] Well, it's Groundhog Day again.

Speaker 2:
[01:26] That's what we're here to talk about, not Groundhog Day, the classic 1993 film starring Bill Murray. We are here to talk about another hit time loop story. This one, a seven book series written by the Danish author Solvej Balle. It's called On the Calculation of Volume. And since its English translations first published in 2024, it has been nominated for several major awards and has become something of an under the radar phenomenon among the literary set. Book IV in this series has just been published here in America. And I have two of my colleagues from The Book Review here to talk about the series. AO. Scott, Tony Scott, our critic at large, and Joumana Khatib, an editor here and my frequent guest, my frequent foil. Joumana, welcome.

Speaker 4:
[02:18] Thank you, Gilbert.

Speaker 2:
[02:20] Tony, welcome.

Speaker 3:
[02:21] Hi, good to be here.

Speaker 2:
[02:22] Joumana, you're going to stay on after the three of us talk to make some recommendations for other books and translation that listeners should check out.

Speaker 4:
[02:29] Absolutely.

Speaker 2:
[02:30] So no move. Before we start, I want to just put a brief spoiler alert here. We're primarily going to talk about the first three books, but we definitely dip into the events of Book IV. So if you're on the verge of reading that, finish it, come back, we'll be here for you. Okay, Tony, we're going to loop back to the beginning here. Can you tell us where this all started? Tell us about this author, tell us about this series.

Speaker 3:
[02:55] Well, Solvej Balle, she's in her 60s. She's a Danish novelist and she'd written some things before this. At some point, as early as 1987, she had this idea before Groundhog Day, by the way, was released to have, what if somebody got stuck in time and kept repeating the same day again and again and again, and what would that be like? Over time, the project took over her life. She lives on a small island, a remote island in Denmark and has been working on this for a very long time. It's this seven volume. I guess in Scandinavia, you have to publish books in groups of seven. The Septology is a big thing there. Knausgaard did it and Jan Fossup. They have, first in Europe and now in North America, really accumulated this following. I can tell you, anecdotally, I was walking around with the galley for Volume 4, as I was getting ready to review it, and someone who I know a little bit kind of said, oh, you've got Volume 4. I'm in the middle of Volume 2. Don't tell me what happens. And there's this kind of like urgency and excitement about this book, in which, in some ways, strictly speaking, nothing happens. The same day repeats itself. I don't want to spoil it, but by the end of Volume 4, it's repeated itself 3,637 times.

Speaker 2:
[04:20] I think it's important, at this point, just take a step back and say some very basic plot details here. This is a book about a woman named Tara Seltzer. She lives in France, and she, after taking a trip to try to get some books, she and her husband have a company, they sell antiquarian books, discovers on the 18th of November that she has woken up again on the 18th of November. Then on the next day, it is still the 18th of November. She wakes up every day and is reliving the same day. Nobody else in her life is reliving the same day, it is just her. Then there are all these other things you discover about how she moves in the world, how the things that she interacts with, how they exist or don't exist in the world. It's a very well thought through take on what would happen if you had to experience this thing over and over again. Joumana, how did you first come to these books?

Speaker 4:
[05:20] I mean, I was just reading them because everybody else in New York was reading them and I was mildly seasonally depressed. I did what I usually do and looked to the Scandinavians for comfort and relief.

Speaker 2:
[05:33] Joumana, nothing that you said just now surprises me.

Speaker 4:
[05:36] I think it's time for me to get off the podcast.

Speaker 2:
[05:40] One of the interesting things about this book, other than the fact that it is a time loop book that is eventually going to take place over seven volumes, is the very unique style here. Tara is writing essentially her life in diary entries. We come into the story, if I flip right here to the first book, on day 121 of her reliving November 18th over and over again. So she is writing her observations. All of the books are through her point of view. There are no direct quotes as far as I can tell in any of the books. A lot of short paragraphs. It put me, and I'd love to hear what it did for you, this style in a very hypnotic state where I was drawn along the entire way. At times I was bored, at times I was gripped. It's fascinating.

Speaker 3:
[06:33] It's fascinating because boredom is part of the experience of reading the book and it's also the subject of the book in a way. I mean, there's not a lot of emotional intensity in her narration. There's never a moment where she flings herself on the floor in despair and says, my God, why can't I get out of this day? She's very observant. It's a very emotionally muted book, and yet there is something gripping about it and something suspenseful. I mean, every volume is very cleverly leads up to a cliffhanger, so it gets you into the next volume. Without saying too much, every volume changes the perspective and the tenor of the experience while keeping it always, as you say, in her voice, in her moods, and in her very reflective, both practical minded and philosophical take on what's happening to her. She's musing on what this is like, what this is about. You know, it turns out, if you take money out of your ATM on November 18th, the next November 18th, it will still be there. But if you buy something from the grocery store on a November 18th, it will be gone the next day. Your consumption will subtract it from the world.

Speaker 4:
[07:49] I think that that was a very helpful counter for me in those moments of boredom, was that there was just enough world building, or God help me, saying world building, but to keep things interesting. There's always a new political or ecological angle. It doesn't shock me knowing what I know about Solvej Balle, that to her money is so unimportant that it replenishes every day. But a leak that Tara and her husband grew in their garden is this precious resource. She has this refrain about how monstrous she feels, she's a monster, that she's devouring her world, that there's this sort of grotesquery, and there's something wrong with her. But Tara herself never really makes any kind of moral judgments about why she is there. But she does feel a lot of culpability while she's frozen in time.

Speaker 3:
[08:46] It's interesting because it comes up, I think it starts to surface more emphatically in the later books. But there is these ethical questions about this existence. And she'll do things like she'll go and shop at different stores around whatever town she's in. So she doesn't deplete things from the shelves. But she does talk about herself as a predator, as a monster, as someone who is just taking resources from the world and leaving it impoverished. And that, in some ways, one of the things I think that you can wonder about as you read these books, not only about the details of the world that they depict, but ask yourself, well, what kind of allegorical meaning is behind this? If this is speculative fiction of a kind, which it is, what's the picture of our own world that it's trying to reflect back on us?

Speaker 4:
[09:45] Yeah, I mean, I had this thought a couple of days ago, where I was thinking about the number seven about this, and thinking, because each book really does have a slightly different focus, right? You know, book one, you're sort of just like, what the hell is going on here? Book two, she's traveling around Europe, trying to give herself a sense of seasons. And I was like, oh God, am I going to have to reread Genesis? Like, is that what Solvej Balle is up to? Is that like each book is sort of her designing a different layer of whatever universe she's building? I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[10:21] There's something about, I mean, you use the word world building to this whole thing that I think leads anyone who reads these books to sort of start to develop their own theories. Obviously, Tara in the book at some point is trying to figure out what happened, why am I here? And the experience of reading these four books has taken me in two directions. One, you start to think about these world building questions. What are the rules and what is allowed and what is not allowed? And then, in the way that I don't normally do, I start to think philosophically, which is, you know, there's something about time travel, time loop stories, you know, Groundhog Day is cited, I think seriously by some, is like one of the great philosophical films. Like, what does this mean about humanity? Like, what does it mean about the person who has stuck to relive the same day over and over again? What is your responsibility to yourself? What is your responsibility to the world? And so, my experience in reading these has sort of been on those two tracks at the same time. What are the rules? How are the rules changing? And then, what does this say about us as people and how we would act or not act in a similar situation?

Speaker 3:
[11:31] One thing that's been interesting to me that I've been thinking about, a lot of people who have written about these books, compare them to the great modernist time novels, to Proust's In Search of Lost Time and to James Joyce's Ulysses, which is because Proust is about time and the experience of time, but it's about memory. It's about the sense of the past racing away in the onrush of modern civilization in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. And Joyce's Ulysses is about all of history, all the epic scale of history, all in one day, condensed into one day in June in Dublin. And this is a book about kind of the loss of the past and of the future. So it's about a kind of a sense of being stuck in this eternal, unchanging present in which nonetheless you have to make your life. You have to figure out what the sort of human dimensions of your life might be. What would it be to live and die your whole life in November 18th? And I think, I mean, I can't help but think about the state of the world, of the actual world that we live in, and a certain sense maybe of stuckness or stasis or of a sort of obscured or clouded future as being some of what these books are about and some of what gives them the kind of this very interesting strong appeal or resonance that we've been talking about.

Speaker 4:
[12:58] Throughout the first two books, my brain was thinking for whatever reason, oh, the thing that will get Tara unstuck is a romance, right? Like it's so interesting that the sort of the natural, if you're me, the natural place to think like, okay, well, what's been the counter in other stories like this? Like what's been the thing to sort of lift you out of tedium or sort of like give you a shock to the system and just falling in love? And Tara is still very devoted to her husband throughout these books. And I think that kind of longing for him, it's funny in the beginning, they have something of a honeymoon, like a second honeymoon period, where they're just like, he seems like the most patient man on Earth. Where she's like, I don't know how to tell you this, but I am reliving November 18th over and over and over. And she has to tell him this every morning. He just kind of goes along with it. It's like, I guess that's the kind of absurdity you come to expect when you devote your life to being an antique book dealer. But I think, I was genuinely shocked when Tara met somebody that was sort of on a similar loop to her. And that felt like such an expansion of possibility and got so exciting. And I loved watching the little society's form. It felt like ancient Greece, but November 18th. Also, I just want to dispel, because I think there are a lot of Bala heads out there who are like, oh, it's the day Proust died, November 18th. And there's a really great interview that Bala did on the LRB podcast. And she's like, well, first I was thinking June, but that wouldn't really work with the sort of environmental thing. And so I just sort of, and then I thought about October, and then I just decided November. And then I realized that's when Proust died. So it's like all these people sort of like, you know, like cryptographers trying to make sense of this. And she's just like, I just picked it. I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[15:04] Well, it's like, it's like you and Genesis. It's like, you know, trying to read as we do with so many works of literature or pieces of art, intentionality into things that often are just like, I stumbled upon this. I don't know, the character led me here. This was the day that seemed not too hot, not too cold, November 18th.

Speaker 4:
[15:23] So you're saying that you don't think that Bala consciously set out to make herself a god.

Speaker 2:
[15:29] Every author is a god of the universe that they create. Coming up, the surprising paradox about being stuck in a time loop.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[17:39] Joumana, I'd love to talk a little bit more about Tara because you, and I felt the same way but in a different direction. When you talk about, well, I thought there would be a romance and that would be a thing that would, you know, my, and this is my, you know, pop culture poisoned brain, you know? I'm like, what is, what are the things that she is going to do in this book that give it plot, like more of a plot in some way? Is she going to, Ravebeck? Is she going to fall off a cliff? Is this going to be, you know, is this going to be like other sort of time loop stories that we've experienced, where there's a lot of sort of comical and serial comical death scenes, and then she wakes up again and she's still alive. But this author is just not interested in that at all.

Speaker 4:
[18:24] And, you know, that's it, like, okay, that's a great segue into like who Tara really is. Because Tara really doesn't take pleasure in anything except like kind of squirreling away notes. And she has this sort of fixation on things, you know, things that stay with her. And I totally understand that when, especially, you're sort of all of a sudden living in a universe where you don't quite understand why some things stay with you day to day and some things disappear. Like there is actually a pretty comic, tragic comic we can say, scene where she goes to her parents' house and they have Christmas. So they go and like buy a turkey and Christmas pudding and they do the Brussels sprouts and roast potatoes. And part of their Christmas tradition is to have leftovers the following day. And Tara doesn't think that, she doesn't trust anything to stay in the fridge. So she shoves everything in like a refrigerated bag under her bed so that they can at least have a nice like, I mean, that's kind of brilliant. You know, so she's loyal to tradition in some ways, but like she really doesn't take pleasure in food or even when she talks about her relationships with the others in her society, I guess, like you don't necessarily feel the pleasure that she gets in human connection.

Speaker 2:
[19:46] This is one of the things, and Tony, I want to hear what you say about this, that has stood out to me most about these books. And again, I've read the four volumes that have been translated into English and look forward to reading the other three. But there is, I don't know if it's just the way I would feel if I was stuck in time for years and years and years, but there is a lack of pleasurable engagement with the world other than in these little flashes. Like there's one, at one point she goes to Spain or Italy or somewhere where she's looking for warm weather, and she says, there were many days and I danced and it just passes.

Speaker 4:
[20:20] It goes with ice in them.

Speaker 2:
[20:21] Yeah, it passes in one or two sentences. And I, as an obviously very normal person, am thinking I would try to maximize my pleasure every single day.

Speaker 3:
[20:31] It's true when she does, occasionally she and her husband do have sex in Volume 1, but it's not particularly steamy or even described very much. And you sort of wonder, well, was she like this before she got stuck in November 18? Like which is cause and which is effect? You know, is this time stuckness a sort of a symptom of or an effect of some alienation from experience that was there already that kind of prepared her for it? Like is this book projecting a kind of a possible world or a possible civilization? Or is it actually mirroring an aspect of the civilization that's already here, say, among the educated middle classes of Western countries who kind of maybe already live like this?

Speaker 4:
[21:21] One thing, see, okay, I was shocked to find out how old she was when she stumbled through time. Because I guess I was imagining her in her 60s. And I don't know, maybe it was because who in their 20s is an antiquarian book dealer? I was shocked to learn that she was in her mid-20s when this happened. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[21:44] I saw her as being close to my age for some reason.

Speaker 4:
[21:48] So, 75.

Speaker 2:
[21:52] Tony, what do you think this structure allows for both characters to experience and also us as readers to experience? What is the effect that living the same day over and over again lands on Tara and on us?

Speaker 3:
[22:08] For Tara, it is a surprising sense of freedom in a way. I mean, we've talked about it as these people being stuck in time, which is in one sense true, but it's also maybe true that they're free. They're liberated in time. That's the linear progression of days that the rest of us are subject to and have no choice about. They can have the same day as many different ways as they want to do it. I think it also opens up a space. I think you were getting to this a little earlier, Gilbert, of philosophical speculation. Even though Tara is certainly temperamentally inclined to thinking and musing and ruminating, something about this experience invites that because you're going over and you're looking at it from all these different angles, and the same thing is happening but is happening because you're different each day, even if the world is not. You see all these nuances and inflections. That, I think, for the reader, makes it interesting and absorbing even when it's tedious. Even when you're like, there are passages in the book where it does feel caught in a wheel and is repeating and nothing new has happened. But I never felt itchy or bored or impatient with it. I just sort of felt like, okay, this is this rhythm and within the confines of this day, so much can happen and you start to have so many questions about it, about the rules and procedures. I started to feel like every time I would come up with a question all by myself, some pages later, Bally would answer it or would tease it or would acknowledge it. So, there's just a lot of room in these books, and you feel yourself as a reader, or I felt as a reader, oddly sort of free in them, that I was not so much compelled by the linear movement of a plot, as just sort of roaming around in this big space and going into different rooms in this kind of weird giant house, which was a very pleasant and very soothing reading experience.

Speaker 2:
[24:30] Sorry, I'm looking up a quote here. Yes. Okay. There's an interview that Bala gave to the literary magazine, The Drift, where she was talking about the title of the book, On the Calculation of Volume. She says, in 1989, I had started this book, I was in Paris, a friend saw a pile of papers. The title was on the top on the Calculation of Volume, and he said, you have to change that title, that's a terrible title. But she very briefly talks about, quote, the time loop creates more of a space or a room than the usual view of time as a line or a river or even as a circle. It's sort of this, the more she lives this day over and over again, the bigger the volume of her time that she is living, sort of grows and grows and grows until, I don't know, maybe she'll never be able to calculate it in the end, but it's quite big.

Speaker 4:
[25:21] I was also really struck by the relationships between, there's one time looper who is kind of grateful for this pause because it allows him to have time with his father who has Parkinson's. And his father's disease actually doesn't seem to be progressing in this period. So it's almost like putting a pause on a degenerative disease. But at the same time, there's another looper who is an entire ocean away from his kid. And those are really the most wrenching philosophical questions.

Speaker 3:
[25:57] I found that a very poignant part as well. It's interesting too that, and this is remarked on in Volume IV, is that there don't seem to be many children in the November 18th world.

Speaker 2:
[26:10] I think it's interesting to try to think of, Tony, as you know, why are there no children that they have found by the end of Book IV? Why are they all sort of seemingly in the same sort of socio-economic, sort of racial cohort? Like, there is something interesting about the similarities between by the end of Book IV, all of the people.

Speaker 3:
[26:33] Yeah. And that, I think, is one of the really interesting things that develops in the fourth volume, because it does sort of re-situate this whole experience on a kind of a collective or social level, you know? So it's now, there are a lot of them. We sort of lose count, you know? At the end of Book III, I think there are four, and then all of a sudden there are nine, and then more and more and more, and they have these house meetings, and then they kind of have a convention of all of the November 18th, and it's one of the comical sort of logistic things, like how do you rent a hall for a convention? That's today, but not the today today. It's like the thing where whenever Tara travels, she arrives in a new city and goes to hotel and asks for a room that hasn't been occupied the night before, which is a great precaution, but also just absurd. And apparently all the people at all the hotels in Europe are like, oh yeah, okay, we can do that.

Speaker 4:
[27:38] I also shudder to think how long it would have taken me to figure that out, like how many strangers I would have woken up next to.

Speaker 3:
[27:45] How many strangers you would wake up next to.

Speaker 4:
[27:47] Next to you in the hotel room. I mean, we have to just sort of thank God, this is just awful.

Speaker 2:
[27:54] Tony, can I ask you, as we near the end of this conversation, in terms of generic expectations, and these books fall outside of genre in so many ways, the framing for this, both in the way that it is being sold, and the way I've described it to people, and the way that people talk to Bala when they interview her, is Groundhog Day, the film starring Bill Murray and Andy MacDowell from 1993. When you say a time loop, you can also say it's a real Groundhog Day type situation. I'm wondering, as someone who was a film critic for almost a quarter century, what that framing led you to think as you entered these books and how you think other people will navigate between those two? How are they different?

Speaker 3:
[28:47] I mean, Groundhog Day has this romantic comedy structure, as Joumana, as you were saying, and it turns out to be about getting it right. When the Bill Murray character is worthy of the love of the Andy MacDowell character, he will be freed. It's what the philosopher and film writer Stanley Cavell called moral perfectionism. That's the plot of that movie. It's about getting yourself right and understanding yourself. It's a Hollywood story, so it's an individual story. It's only happening to him. And it only matters that it's happening to him. This is something else because the redoing it doesn't seem to impose any kind of purpose or logic or responsibility on people, I don't think. It's much more, it turns out to be, I think, much more about what this would be as a general human condition. So it starts out as an individual story, but it, and Tara is our narrator, and I assume will stay our narrator, but it isn't really her story, and it's not really about who she is. In some ways, we never know, we still don't know really who she is. But it's about what it is to live in time and whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing, what it would feel like to have your whole sense of your orientation forward in time changed or taken away.

Speaker 2:
[30:23] I think it would be a great thing. My favorite part so far in these four books is when the character Henry on the first or second day realizes that he has time to catch up on his emails. That seems like something I would do. I thought it was great. I've enjoyed living in this time with the two of you. Tony Scott, thank you so much for joining the pod.

Speaker 3:
[30:43] Such a pleasure. I'm sorry that it has to come to an end.

Speaker 2:
[30:48] After the break, Joumana digs into the world of literary translation, and she recommends some books for you to read next.

Speaker 1:
[31:01] This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Spring always feels like a reset. Clearing things out, simplifying what you don't need.

Speaker 5:
[31:07] Apple Card is built with that same idea in mind.

Speaker 1:
[31:10] No annual fee, no late fees, and no foreign transaction fees. No fees, period. Get started and apply in the Wallet App on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.49% to 27.74% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of January 1st, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet App or at card.apple.com. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

Speaker 5:
[31:37] If you're a parent of a teen or have teens in your life, it can be hard to figure out the right way to approach social media and technology. Ultimately, if you feel like your teens are ready, there are tools to help. Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections for what your teens see and who can contact them, plus time management tools like daily time limits and sleep mode. And Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. That's instagram.com/teenaccounts. Some days are just made for good food and great conversation. On Be My Guest with Ina Garten, being a guest means sharing recipes, stories, asking questions, opening up, and eating something delicious together. That's when things really happen. This season, hear from guests like John Batiste, Allison Jani, and Hoda Kotb. Listen to Be My Guest with Ina Garten wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2:
[32:40] Okay, Joumana. These On the Calculation of Volume books started in their first two volumes with one translator, Barbara Haviland. Then in books three and four, a pair of translators take over, Sophia Hersey-Smith and Jennifer Russell. I'm curious about two things. What is your understanding of how authors and translators work together, and then this phenomenon or the situation where two people are working on translating one book? That seems quite difficult to me. But it worked clearly in these two volumes that we read.

Speaker 4:
[33:19] Yeah, and it does work. I mean, I can think Sam Bett and David Boyd translate from Japanese into English. They're great. They're an amazing pair. They were the ones who worked on the first books by Mieko Kawakami to come into English. And she's obviously still something of a sensation among them.

Speaker 2:
[33:38] And what is she writing?

Speaker 4:
[33:40] She's the author of Breasts and Eggs, Heaven. She has a new sort of noir out called Sisters in Yellow. They did not work on that book. And I did feel that, frankly. But to your earlier question about how translators and authors work together, I think it, I mean, I think it really depends. So first, a lot of translators have worked on books or work by dead people. So that's kind of a non-starter. I remember I was profiling Anne Goldstein, who is Elena Ferrante's translator. And I asked her, I was like, how often do you like email her or do you ever email her directly? And she's like, I've emailed her directly maybe five times. But anytime I have a query, most of the time I go through her editor. And so that's my understanding of how it works most of the time.

Speaker 2:
[34:34] This is a very specific question for you. But I feel like you might actually have an answer. You know, there are people that have like favorite audiobook narrators. Yep. Is it? Do you have a favorite translator?

Speaker 4:
[34:47] I do. Can I tell you about him? I love him so much. His name is Frank Nguyen. He, W-I-N-N-E. He is an Irish, I think savant, right? He's just a genius. He translates from Spanish and French. And I first encountered him when I was reading Virginie Despentes, who's a sort of like post-punk French writer. And all of her writing, whether it's her nonfiction or her novels, are extremely voice driven. She has this sort of like feminist manifesto called King Kong Theory. And he, he really was an incredible conduit for her voice. And she has this trilogy of books that I think everybody should read. Vernon Subutex, it's about a sort of unemployed record dealer just bouncing around the right bank of Paris, meeting a bunch of very colorful characters and just the way that he's able to juggle all these voices is amazing. And like everything is so alive. They feel very expansive, those books.

Speaker 2:
[35:59] Okay, Joumana, what other books in translation would you recommend?

Speaker 4:
[36:03] From this vast, wild, ensorcelling universe.

Speaker 2:
[36:06] So big.

Speaker 4:
[36:07] So as a specific comp for On the Calculation of Volume, I'm going to recommend Time Shelter. This is by a Bulgarian writer, Georgi Gospodinov, and translated by Angelo Rodel. This won the International Booker in 2023. This is about a clinic in Zurich that's set up for Alzheimer's patients, where each floor of the facility recreates a different decade. So wherever they live in their head, they can have their physical reality match their memories. It's really good.

Speaker 2:
[36:45] Wow. Okay. That's a great idea.

Speaker 4:
[36:47] Another recent discovery for me was Yuko Tsushima. So the book that I love most by her is Territory of Light. This is translated by Geraldine Harcourt. Geraldine Harcourt, I think, maybe only ever translated Yuko Tsushima. And I wish she had translated everything because like her, I mean, this is one of the most incredible books I've read in, I would say, at least the last 18 months. It's about a single mom and her four-year-old daughter getting their own apartment in Tokyo and just like rebuilding their life together after the implosion of her marriage. And it's so elegant and funny and surprising and beautifully rendered into English. I love that book. Another one. Okay. Classics are a blind spot for me. Like I really, really need to go reread.

Speaker 2:
[37:41] Like classics in quotes?

Speaker 4:
[37:43] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[37:44] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[37:44] Yeah. What is classics out of quotes?

Speaker 2:
[37:47] I don't know why I said that.

Speaker 4:
[37:49] Anyway, I need to go back and reread like Turgenev and all the Anna Karenina. But I did just finish an Italian classic that I really liked. It's called The Betrothed in English. In Italian, it's I Promessi Sposi by Alessandro Manzoni, who is one of the first writers around the time that Italy decided to unify its language. It's a classic love story. It's a parable, it's a political parable, it's a societal parable, but it's also just a lovely translation. That's translated by Michael F. Moore, whose translations from Italian into English, I highly recommend. Then another one that I love, I love this book. This is Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, who's German. All of her books are great, Go, Went, Gone, et cetera. So Kairos was translated by Michael Hoffman, and is a very, very nuanced and complex, I guess you could just call it an age gap novel, relationship age gap novel. It's really good.

Speaker 2:
[39:00] Joumana, I say this with genuine sincerity. I always feel smarter after hearing you talk about books.

Speaker 4:
[39:08] Thank you. It was genuinely my pleasure. I could go for 20 more minutes.

Speaker 2:
[39:12] I think we're good.

Speaker 4:
[39:13] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[39:18] The Book Review is produced by Sarah Diamond and Amy Pearl. It's edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed this week by Katie McMurrin. Original music by Dan Powell and Alisha by Etube. Special thanks to Dahlia Haddad. We want to hear what you think about the show, so send us an e-mail at thebookreviewatnytimes.com. I'm Gilbert Cruz. Thanks for listening. Eighteen-year-olds don't know Groundhog Day. What's happening?

Speaker 4:
[39:51] I've never seen it.

Speaker 2:
[39:52] You've never seen it?

Speaker 4:
[39:53] Should I watch it?