I is Another
Septology III-V
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE 2023 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
"Fosse’s portrait of intersecting lives is that rare metaphysical novel that readers will find compulsively readable.”—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
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. I is Another 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?
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.
