The Other Name: Septology I - II

The first book of Jon Fosse’s magnum opus.

Jon Fosse has completed a 1250 page prose work: Septology. He started writing prose again in the summer of 2015, after a short break, and since then he has been writing constantly. The work as a whole is called Septology and the seven parts were published in three volumes: The Other Name: Septology I – II, I is Another: Septology III – V and A New Name: Septology VI – VII.

The main character and first-person narrator of Septology, Asle, is a painter and widower who lives in the house in Dylgja, where he used to live with his wife Ales. He is now alone; almost the only people he still sees are his neighbour, Åsleik—an old-fashioned country fisherman—and his gallerist, Beyer, who lives in the city of Bjørgvin, a couple of hours’ drive to the south.

Another Asle, also a painter, lives in Bjørgvin, and he and the narrator are doppelgangers, in a way, or perhaps two versions of the same person, the same life. The one who married Ales also became religious, quit drinking, and became a successful painter; the other is on a harder path. It is a central event of Fosse’s fictional universe when they meet. The action of the novel takes place during Advent, shortly before Christmas, with the lives of the two Asles told both in flashback and in the present.

Septology is about the nature of art, and God; about alcoholism and the passage of time. Like so much of Fosse’s work, it address love, death, and the sea.