I Is Another: Septology III - V

Jon Fosse The Nobel Prize

Original title: Eg er ein annan. Septologien III - V
Publisher: Det Norske Samlaget, 2020
Genre: Novel
Pages: 400 pages

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, and, worried about his friend, drives on snowy roads back and forth between Dylgja and Bjørgvin.

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, life away from home going to high school in the larger town nearby. 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.

Foreign rights

Arabic: (Saudi-Arabia) Dar Athar
Brazilian-Portuguese: Editora Fósforo
Chinese (Simplified): Yilin Press
Danish: Batzer & Co
English (UK): Fitzcarraldo Editions
English: (US): Transit Books
English (ANZ): Giramondo
Croatian: Naklada Ljeva
Dutch: UItgeverij Oevers
Finnish: WSOY
French: Christian Bourgois
German: Rowohlt
Greek: Gutenberg
Italian: La Nave di Teseo
Polish: Art Rage
Portuguese: Cavalo de Ferro
Romanian: Pandora Publishing
Serbian: Treći Trg
Spanish: De Conatus
Swedish: Bonniers

Jon Fosse

Photo: Agnete Brun

Jon Fosse awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023
Jon Fosse, born in 1959, is widely considered one of the most important writers of our time. For almost forty years he has written novels, plays, poems, stories, essays, and children’s books. His award-winning work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and his plays have been staged over a thousand times all over the world.

Jon Fosse grew up in Strandebarm, a small village in the western part of Norway, he lives today in the Grotten, an honorary residence in Oslo, as well as in Hainburg, Austria, and Frekhaug, Norway.

Fosse’s longest work of prose to date is Septology (2019–21), which he started during a break from playwrighting and after converting to Catholicism in 2013. Fosse has called his method of writing Septology ”slow prose”: a style of shifting levels, scenes, and reflections, the exact opposite of fast-paced drama. Its seven parts have been published in three volumes: The Other Name, I Is Another, and A New Name. It is a suggestive, magnificent narrative about the nature of art and God, about alcoholism, friendship, love, and the passage of time. Septology is translated into over 20 languages and is critically acclaimed worldwide.

For Septology, Jon Fosse has received numerous awards, including the Brage Prize and the Critics’ Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the international Booker Prize and the American National Book Award.

Furthermore, the hiatus in playwriting is over; Fosse is once again writing for the theater. Since 2020, three new plays have premiered. Jon Fosse’s most recent prose work, the novel Kvitleik (A Shining) was released in spring 2023 — a luminous narrative exploring the boundary between life and death.

In 2023, Fosse is also celebrating a literary milestone, marking 40 years since his debut with the novel Raudt, svart (Red, black).

Fosse is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023 and has received numerous prizes, both in Norway and internationally through the years.