Septology VI - VII: A New Name

Septology VI - VII: A New Name

Jon Fosse

Original title: Eit nytt namn. Septologien VI - VII
Publisher: Samlaget, 2021
Genre: Novel
Pages: 331 pages

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Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbour, 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.

In this final instalment of Jon Fosse’s Septology, the major prose work by ‘the Beckett of the twenty-first century’ (Le Monde), Christmas is approaching. Tradition has it that Åsleik and Asle eat lutefisk together, but this year Asle has agreed for the first time to celebrate Christmas with Åsleik and his sister, Guro. On Christmas Eve, Åsleik, Asle, and the dog Bragi take Åsleik’s boat out on the Sygnefjord. Meanwhile, we follow the lives of the two Asles as younger adults in flashbacks: the narrator meets his lifelong love, Ales; joins the Catholic Church; starts exhibiting with Beyer; and can make a living by trying to paint away all the pictures stuck in his mind. After a while, Asle and Ales leave the city and move to the house in Dylgja. The other Asle gets married too, but his wedding ends with a sobbing bride and is followed soon after by a painful breakup.

Written in melodious and hypnotic ‘slow prose’, A New Name: Septology VI-VII is a transcendent exploration of the human condition and a radically other reading experience – incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.

Foreign rights

Arabic: (Saudi-Arabia) Dar Athar
Danish: Batzer & Co
Chinese (Simplified): Yilin Press
Croatian: Naklada Ljeva
Dutch: Uitgeverij Oevers
English (UK): Fitzcarraldo Editions
English (US): Transit Books
English: (ANZ) Giromondo
French: Christian Bourgois éditeur
German: Rowohlt
Greek: Gutenberg
Italian: La Nave di Teseo
Polish: ArtRage
Romanian: Pandora Publishing
Serbian:Treći Trg
Spanish: De Conatus
Swedish: Bonniers

Awards

Winner of The Brage Prize 2021
Winner of the Norwegian Critic’s Prize 2021
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022"Link text":https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/2022
Finalist for the 2022 National Book Award for Literary Translations. Winner to be announced on 16 November 22

Jon Fosse takes his writing to places where no other Norwegian author can follow him.

Sindre Hovdenakk, VG

A beautiful final volume about art, yearning, and passion. Jon Fosse concludes his masterpiece Septology with outstanding novelistic art. – 6/6 stars

Gro Jørstad Nilsen, Bergens Tidende

The whole Septology can be read on one level as a staging of Meister Eckhart’s mysticism. The way Fosse uses repetitions has an almost hypnotic effect on the reader, much like the prayer for Asle running through all three volumes. Silence is also an element Fosse uses in the composition, which makes this an outstanding novel. The unspoken things concerning Asle’s dead sister Alida emerge as an almost “luminous” silence… The playground from the first volume returns with a richer meaning here. In Fosse’s rich and innovative Septology, this unforgettable moment becomes timeless literary art.

Gro Jørstad Nilsen BT

Septology reeks of greatness. […] Jon Fosse has done it again. The series will remain a pre-eminent work in Fosse’s oeuvre, and, dare I say, in the Norwegian canon. […] This book is a depiction of growing up, of becoming an artist, a story about love and friendship, about loneliness and longing.

Ulla Svalheim, Vårt Land

Jon Fosse

Portrait jon fosse septology
Photo: Tom A. 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 finished 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 for the Booker International Prize. I Is Another: Septology III – V was published autumn 2020 and A New Name: Septology VI – VII in September 2021.

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