On the Calculation of Volume

Solvej Balle, Translated by Barbara J. Haveland

On the Calculation of Volume is a poetic, page-turning European masterpiece about one woman’s fall through the cracks of time.

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and Winner of the Nordic Council Prize for Literature, books one and two are available from this extraordinary multi-volume project. Part three is published in November 2025.

Tara Selter has slipped out of time. Every morning, she wakes up to the 18th of November. She no longer expects to wake up to the 19th of November, and she no longer remembers the 17th of November as if it were yesterday.

As Tara approaches her 365th 18th of November, she can’t shake the feeling that somewhere underneath the surface of this day, there’s a way to escape.

Watch the author talking about the art of translation:

Queen

Brigitta Trotzig, translated by Saskia Vogel

The rediscovered 1964 novella is the singular, dark, mercurial story of Judit, also called Queen, who lives on a windswept farm on the coast of rural Sweden. She holds her little realm tight until the surprise arrival of a Polish widow from New York, who upends her carefully balanced world. Trotzig’s writing is remarkably balanced: at once cold and full of emotion, ordinary and troubled, measured and pacy. 

Born of Guilt is one of that novels that teaches you how to read it as you do so: The poetic prose slides between the three characters, reflecting how embedded they are in each other’s histories and psyches. But this isn’t an ethereal, mood-based narrative, its carefully-plotted journey between post-Communist Bulgaria and hyper-Capitalist USA contains many hard-hitting, acutely perceptive scenes showcasing the tender and brutal sides to loving a person or a place.

The Mark

Fríða Ísberg, Translated by Larissa Kyzer

‘Searingly brilliant . . . [Ísberg] like George Orwell and Anthony Burgess before her, lets the dystopian ironies speak for themselves.’ TLS

A debut novel, by Icelandic author Fríða Ísberg, of urgent big ideas imbued with pacy plotting and atmospheric power, by an exciting new talent.

The Icelandic Psychological Association has prepared a test. They call it a sensitivity assessment: a way of measuring a person’s empathy and identifying the potential for anti-social behaviour.

In a few days’ time, Iceland will vote on whether to make the test compulsory for every citizen. The nation is bitterly divided. Some believe the test makes society safer; others decry it as a violation.

‘The book is not mine, and it’s still mine.’ Watch Fríða Ísberg talking about how she finds the translation process:

Minihorror

Barbi Marcović, translated by Jen Calleja

Sex and Lies

Leïla Slimani, Translated by Sophie Lewis

From the prize winning and bestselling author of Lullaby and Adèle: a fascinating and witty collection of essays on the lives of women grappling with sexual politics in a deeply conservative culture.

In a country where the law punishes and outlaws all forms of sex outside marriage, as well as homosexuality and prostitution, women have only two options for their sexual identities: virgin or wife. Sex and Lies is an essential confrontation with Morocco’s intimate demons and a vibrant appeal for the universal freedom to be, to love and to desire.

More books by Leïla Slimani.

The Woman in the Purple Skirt
Natsuko Imamura, Translated by Lucy North

The Woman in the Purple Skirt is being watched. Someone is following her, always perched just out of sight, monitoring which buses she takes; what she eats; whom she speaks to. But this invisible observer isn’t a stalker – it’s much more complicated than that.

Clever, bewildering and darkly comic, The Woman in the Purple Skirt is the story of two women whose lives are set to become terribly entwined.

We Know You Remember
Tove Alsterdal, Translated by Alice Menzies

From Swedish crime sensation Tove Asterdal: immerse yourself in the long summer days of this claustrophobic community as detective Eira Sjödin takes on a case guaranteed to keep you guessing to the end.

Lina Stavred went missing twenty years ago. A local boy confessed to her murder – but the body was never found. The case was closed, the records were sealed. Since then, the people of Ådalen have avoided talking about that painful summer, preferring to leave the past untouched. Now Lina’s murderer has reappeared. This is detective Eira Sjödin’s chance to untangle years of well-kept secrets – but the truth is something Ådalen would rather forget.

Sulphuric Acid
Amélie Nothomb, Translated by Shaun Whiteside

Sulphuric Acid tells the story of a reality TV death camp, which has become the nation’s obsession – an amoral spectacle played out through the media. It is a blackly funny and shocking satire on the modern predilection for reality television and celebrity, in which the audience at home develops a taste for blood.

The Pixels of Paul Cézanne
Wim Wenders, Translated by Jen Calleja

The Pixels of Paul Cézanne is a collection of essays by Wim Wenders in which he presents his observations and reflections on the fellow artists who have influenced, shaped and inspired him. He looks at the dance work of Pina Bausch, the paintings of Cézanne, Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, as well as the films of Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ozu, Anthony Mann, Douglas Sirk and Sam Fuller. He tries to understand their individual perspectives and, in the process, reveals his own art of perception in texts of rare poignancy.

Pig Tales
Marie Darrieussecq, Translated by Linda Coverdale

Pig Tales is a brilliant satirical novel about a stunning young woman working in a beauty ‘massage’ parlour. She enjoys extraordinary success at bringing home the bacon (in part due to her increasingly rosy and irresistible backside) until she slowly metamorphoses – into a pig. Rejected by her boyfriend, left to wander the sewers and forage for food in public parks, she takes up with a werewolf with insatiable appetites. They share everything (pizza is a particular favourite; she gets the pizza, he gets the delivery boy) until someone alerts the authorities and tragedy strikes . . .

Nights of Plague
Orhan Pamuk, Translated by Ekin Oklap

1901. Night draws in.

With the stealth of a spy vessel, the royal ship Aziziye approaches the famous vistas of Mingheria. ‘An emerald built of pink stone’. The twenty-ninth state of the ailing Ottoman Empire.

The ship carries Princess Pakize, the daughter of a deposed sultan, her doctor husband, and the Royal Chemist, Bonkowski Pasha. Each of them holds a separate mission. Not all of them will survive the weeks ahead. Because Mingheria is on the cusp of catastrophe. There are rumours of plague – rumours some in power will try to suppress.

But plague is not the only killer.

Soon, the eyes of the world will turn to this ancient island, where the future of a fragile empire is at stake, in an epic and playful mystery of passion, fear, scandal and murder, from one of history’s master storytellers.

Night as it Falls
Jakuta Alikavazovic, Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman

Paul works as a hotel night guard to make ends meet. Amelia, who studies at the same university, is the young woman who rents Room 313. Everything about her is a mystery: where she goes, who she meets – and where she comes from. The two students become compulsively and inextricably entangled, until one day, Amelia disappears.

Night as It Falls is a novel of high passion and low light, tracing two young lovers who must both come to terms with their inherited bonds and the paths that shape the future.

Kitchen
Banana Yoshimoto, Translated by Megan Backus

Kitchen juxtaposes two tales about mothers, transsexuality, bereavement, kitchens, love and tragedy in contemporary Japan. It is a startlingly original first work by Japan’s brightest young literary star and is now a cult film.

Kitchen was first published in Japan in 1987. It won two of Japan’s most prestigious literary prizes, climbed its way to the top of the bestseller lists, then remained there for over a year and sold millions of copies. Banana Yoshimoto was hailed as a young writer of great talent and great passion whose work has quickly earned a place among the best of modern literature, and has been described as ‘the voice of young Japan’ by the Independent on Sunday.

A special edition of Kitchen is available exclusively from Faber.

The Festival of Insignificance
Milan Kundera, Translated by Linda Asher

Readers who know Kundera’s earlier books know that the wish to incorporate an element of the unserious in a novel is not at all unexpected of him. Casting light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one serious sentence; being fascinated by the reality of the contemporary world and at the same time completely avoiding realism – that is The Festival of Insignificance. Now, far from watching out, Kundera is finally and fully realising his old aesthetic dream in this novel that we could easily view as a summation of his whole work.

The Expedition to the Baobab Tree
Wilma Stockenström, Translated by J. M. Coetzee

A young slave girl accompanies her owner on an expedition into the African interior in search of a mythical city. In unfamiliar terrain, the party gets lost. One by one, our narrator’s companions disappear, leaving her to take refuge in the hollow of a baobab tree. There, she finds the space and will to reflect upon her life’s journey, telling her story to the baobab itself. This powerful fable, translated from Wilma Stockenström’s original Afrikaans by Nobel Prize-winner J. M. Coetzee, is a remarkable portrait of dislocation and empowerment.