I is Another — WINNER OF THE 2023 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
Septology III-V
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbour, Asleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjorgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgangers - two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions. In this second instalment of Jon Fosse's Septology, 'a major work of Scandinavian fiction' (Hari Kunzru), the two Asles meet for the first time in their youth. They look strangely alike, dress identically, and both want to be painters. At art school in Bjorgvin, Asle meets and falls in love with his future wife, Ales. Written in 'melodious and hypnotic slow prose', I is Another: Septology III-V is an exquisite metaphysical novel about love, art, God, friendship, and the passage of time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fosse continues to wend his way through the mind of Asle, a painter living on the west coast of Norway, in the impressive follow-up to The Other Name. Asle is gray-haired, widowed, and lives alone in a cabin by the sea. As he goes about his day, he imagines his younger selves as others, encountering them in memories and, perhaps, alternate versions of his own life. Another Asle appears first as a child, bereaved by the death of his sister and fighting with his difficult mother, then as a teen who develops a strong revulsion for painting idyllic landscapes; he'd rather paint from inner visions: "his head is full of pictures, it's a real torment." Young-adult Asle applies to art school while present-day Asle wonders if he's done with painting entirely, and how he might understand himself without the desire to paint. Asle is a gentle, somewhat fretful narrator, and Fosse masterfully arranges the strands of the different narratives as they lap against each other and occasionally contradict. The result is meditative and cyclical, yet surprisingly accessible.
