Septology by Jon Fosse
The Nobel Prize winner 2023
2022 National Book Award, Finalist
2022 International Booker Prize, Finalist
2022 National Book Critics Circle Award, Finalist
New York Times Editors’ Choice
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Bookforum
This special edition collects the three volumes of Septology—The Other Name, I is Another, and A New Name—for the first time.
What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Asle, an aging painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway, is reminiscing about his life. His only friends are his neighbor, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers—two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions about death, love, light and shadow, faith and hopelessness.
The three volumes of Jon Fosse’s Septology—The Other Name, I is Another, and A New Name—collected here for the first time, are a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience—incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.
The Nobel Prize winner 2023
2022 National Book Award, Finalist
2022 International Booker Prize, Finalist
2022 National Book Critics Circle Award, Finalist
New York Times Editors’ Choice
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Bookforum
This special edition collects the three volumes of Septology—The Other Name, I is Another, and A New Name—for the first time.
What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Asle, an aging painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway, is reminiscing about his life. His only friends are his neighbor, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers—two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions about death, love, light and shadow, faith and hopelessness.
The three volumes of Jon Fosse’s Septology—The Other Name, I is Another, and A New Name—collected here for the first time, are a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience—incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.
The Nobel Prize winner 2023
2022 National Book Award, Finalist
2022 International Booker Prize, Finalist
2022 National Book Critics Circle Award, Finalist
New York Times Editors’ Choice
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Bookforum
This special edition collects the three volumes of Septology—The Other Name, I is Another, and A New Name—for the first time.
What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Asle, an aging painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway, is reminiscing about his life. His only friends are his neighbor, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers—two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions about death, love, light and shadow, faith and hopelessness.
The three volumes of Jon Fosse’s Septology—The Other Name, I is Another, and A New Name—collected here for the first time, are a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience—incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.
“I hesitate to compare the experience of reading these works to the act of meditation. But that is the closest I can come to describing how something in the critical self is shed in the process of reading Fosse, only to be replaced by something more primal. A mood. An atmosphere. The sound of words moving on a page.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in 1959 in Strandebarm, in Vestland, western Norway, Jon Fosse’s remarkably prolific career began in 1983 with his first novel, Red, Black, and since then he has published numerous novels, stories, books of poetry, children’s books, and essay collections. He began writing plays in 1993, with Someone Is Going to Come, and since then he has written almost thirty plays, including A Summer’s Day, Dream of Autumn, Death Variations, Sleep, and I Am the Wind.
Since the mid-nineties his plays have had unparalleled international success, being performed over a thousand times all over the world; his works have been translated into more than fifty languages. Today Fosse is one of the most performed living playwrights, but he has continued to write novels, stories, and poetry of exceptional quality. In 2015 he received the Nordic Council Literature Prize for his work Trilogy, consisting of Wakefulness, Olav’s Dreams, and Weariness. Fosse’s earlier novels Melancholy I and II, Morning and Evening, and Aliss at the Fire have also received wide critical acclaim.
Fosse received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature, and has been awarded numerous prizes both in Norway and abroad. The three books that comprise his magnum opus, Septology—The Other Name, I is Another, and A New Name—are published by Transit Books.
