The Other Name
Septology I-II
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4.0 • 14 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE 2023 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
Longlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize
“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
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The first two installments of Fosse's wondrous septology (after Morning and Evening) sustain a riveting stream of consciousness in a single rhythmic sentence. A graying painter named Asle drives back and forth from the remote Norwegian seaside town of Dylgja to Bj rgvin, where a gallery shows his work. As he begins to drive out of Bj rgvin, he worries about another painter, also named Asle, whom he regrets not visiting there. He stops the car and walks through a snowy playground; observing a couple, he darkly desires to "paint them away" so that the "picture will disappear... and the uneasiness inside me will stop." Along with worry and unease, Asle is haunted by memories of the childhood deaths of a neighbor boy and Asle's sister. While he wanders in the snow, a woman recognizes him and invites him back to her house; he claims not to know her, and readers will understand she has mistaken him for the other Asle. Fosse's recursive narrative has echoes of such literary contemporaries as Ben Lerner and Karl Ove Knausgaard, while his deep focus on minutiae calls to mind Nathalie Sarraute. Fosse's portrait of intersecting lives is that rare metaphysical novel that readers will find compulsively readable.
Customer Reviews
Stunning.
Hypnotic and beautiful