November 18

11·18 is the collective title of the Chinese four-volume edition of Danish author Solvej Balle's "11·18" series, published in Simplified Chinese by Jieli Publishing House in 2025. The protagonist is Tara Selter, a French bookseller. On a business trip to Paris she accidentally falls into a time loop: wherever she goes, she wakes the next morning to November 18 again. The people around her live on as usual, unaware, neither aging nor remembering yesterday; only she is left in the same day with her memories, her body aging, her hair growing, the food she eats vanishing by the next loop. The first volume, On the Calculation of Volume I, begins with her 121st encounter with November 18: she lives invisibly under the same roof as her husband Thomas, records each repeating day in a diary, and asks what triggered the loop. In the second volume, On the Calculation of Volume II, she travels north to Denmark, Sweden, and Finland in search of winter, rebuilds spring with festive decorations, seeks the feel of summer in Madrid and the Basque Country, and discovers on her journey that others seem to be caught in the crack of time as well. In the third volume, On the Calculation of Volume III, she finally meets Henry, Olga, and Ralf; the four live together, discuss ways to restore the order of time, and try to help those in danger on November 18. In the fourth volume, On the Calculation of Volume IV, more and more "same-time" people join, forming a loose community, and a phone call from Thomas brings the first possibility of escape. The work has no climax of saving the world and no victorious endpoint of breaking free from the loop; instead, through the device of the time loop, it writes of an individual re-perceiving the world and re-understanding the self amid infinitely repeated days, asking about loneliness, memory, and the meaning of existence. The series won the 2022 Nordic Council Literature Prize 60th Anniversary Award and the 2023 Critics' Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize.