The Other Name: Septology I-II

The Other Name: Septology I-II

$17.95

JON FOSSE

Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls

New York Times Editors’ Choice
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL TRANSLATION AWARD

The Other Name follows the lives of two men living close to each other on the west coast of Norway. The year is coming to a close and Asle, an aging painter and widower, is reminiscing about his life. He lives alone, his only friends being his neighbor, Åsleik, a bachelor and traditional Norwegian fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in Bjørgvin, a couple hours’ drive south of Dylgja, where he lives. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter. He and the narrator are doppelgangers—two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life.

Written in hypnotic prose that shifts between the first and third person, The Other Name calls into question concrete notions around subjectivity and the self. What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Through flashbacks, Fosse deftly explores the convergences and divergences in the lives of both Asles, slowly building towards a decisive encounter between them both. A writer at the zenith of his career, with The Other Name, the first two volumes in his Septology, Fosse presents us with an indelible and poignant exploration of the human condition that will endure as his masterpiece.

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Praise for Septology

“An extraordinary seven-novel sequence about an old man’s recursive reckoning with the braided realities of God, art, identity, family life and human life itself… The books feel like the culminating project of an already major career.”—Randy Boyagoda, The New York Times

“In The Other Name's rhythmic accumulation of words, [there is] something incantatory and self-annihilating—something that feels almost holy.”—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

“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.” —Ruth Margalit, The New York Review of Books

“The Other Name trembles with the beauty, doubt, and gnostic weariness of great religious fiction. In Fosse’s hands, God is a difficult, pungent, overwhelmingly aesthetic force, ‘the invisible inside the visible.’”—Dustin Illingworth, The Nation

"Fosse’s portrait of intersecting lives is that rare metaphysical novel that readers will find compulsively readable.”—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Fosse’s fusing of the commonplace and the existential, together with his dramatic forays into the past, make for a relentlessly consuming work: already Septology feels momentous.”—The Guardian

"Its striking characters and whiplash prose make for compulsive reading, engrossing from the start, unforgettable at the end."—World Literature Today

“Fosse has written a strange mystical moebius strip of a novel, in which an artist struggles with faith and loneliness, and watches himself, or versions of himself, fall away into the lower depths. The social world seems distant and foggy in this profound, existential narrative, which is only the first part of what promises to be a major work of Scandinavian fiction.” —Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears

“Jon Fosse is a major European writer.”—Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle

“Masterful ... From the very first word, I wanted to read the book straight through in one go. ... A brilliant novel. ... Fosse’s way of “painting” pictures in words is gripping and truly different from what can be found in any other literature. ... A simplified universe full of wonder, intensity, and warm humor.”—Gro Jørstad Nilsen, Bergens Tidende

“Only Jon Fosse can write like this! ... New readers who want to experience true art have reason to rejoice over The Other Name: Septology I-II. The first part of Fosse’s long-awaited magnum opus Septology is here. And Fosse delivers: he creates pictures in words and voices like no one else. An underlying feeling of something fragile and precious is what drives the action, as if breakdown and despair were constantly threatening, just below the surface.”—Sindre Hovdennak, VG

“Jon Fosse’s prose is so musical that it can give meaning to the mere keeping of time. ... A magnificent reading experience.”—Vidar Kvalshaug, BOK365

“One of his richest and warmest novels. ... Radiant literature.”—Terje Eidsvåg, Adresseavisen