I is Another: Septology III-V

Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls

2022 Longlist

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 second instalment of Jon Fosse’s Septology, 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 Bjørgvin, Asle meets and falls in love with his future wife, Ales.

About the Author/Translator

Jon Fosse was born in 1959 on the west coast of Norway and is the recipient of countless prestigious prizes, both in his native Norway and abroad. Since his 1983 fiction debut, Raudt, svart [Red, Black], Fosse has written prose, poetry, essays, short stories, children’s books, and over forty plays, with more than a thousand productions performed and translations into fifty languages. A New Name is the final volume in Septology, his latest prose work, published in three volumes by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Damion Searls is an award-winning translator from German, Norwegian, French and Dutch and a writer in English. He has translated five books and a libretto by Jon Fosse – Melancholy (co-translated with Grethe Kvernes), Aliss at the Fire, Morning and Evening (novel and libretto), Scenes from a Childhood and The Other Name, the first volume of Septology, which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award 2021  – and books by many other classic modern writers.

Librarian’s Comments

A beautiful, meditative and cyclic story about an artist in western Norway. When we try to describe the book, it sounds like a pretentious heap, but it’s very accessible and moving. Sølvberget Library Culture Centre, Norway