Jon Fosse
I Is Another: Septology III - V

Asle, a painter, lives alone in Dylgja, north of Bjørgvin. He has almost no contact with anyone but his neighbor Åsleik, a bachelor fisherman and farmer. Another Asle lives in Bjørgvin, also a painter—the two Asles are friends, and doppelgangers in a way, leading two versions of the same life.
While the narrator, the first Asle, is getting his paintings ready for his Christmas exhibition at the Beyer Gallery in Bjørgvin, he finds his friend Asle lying in the snow. This Asle is an alcoholic and has collapsed. Asle brings him to the hospital, picks up and takes care of his dog.

Asle’s life in Dylgja is told both in the present and in flashbacks to the past. This second volume of Jon Fosse’s Septology gives us a glimpse into Asle’s life as a boy and a teenager. There are fumbling kisses, smoking and drinking, amateur rock bands and fist fights, a nagging mother and a silent father. Beyer the gallerist discovers the young painter when Asle puts on a summer show in his hometown youth center. Meanwhile, the two Asles meet for the first time and soon both get admitted to art school in Bjørgvin. There Asle meets and falls in love with his future wife, Ales.

Septology is a hypnotic, magnificent novel about the nature of love, art, God, alcoholism, friendship, and the passage of time. There is death in the story, but also what it’s like to be alive—the warmth of a dog in your lap, the pleasure of driving alone, how good bacon and eggs can taste.

Jon Fosse

Tom Kolstad

Jon Fosse is widely considered one of the world’s most important living writers. Born in 1959 in Strandebarm, a small village in the western part of Norway, he lives today in the Grotten, an honorary residence, as well as in Hainburg, Austria, and Frekhaug, Norway.

Fosse has received numerous prizes, both in Norway and internationally, and he is mentioned increasingly often as a likely contender for the Nobel Prize. He has currently finishing a major seven-volume work of what he calls “slow prose”. Septology consists of three volumes: The Other Name: Septology I – II was published in 2019 to international praise and longlisted to the Booker International Prize. I Is Another: Septology III – V will be published autumn 2020 . Third volumeA New Name: Septology VI – VII will be published in autumn 2021.