A New Name

A New Name

By Jon Fosse

Pages

197

Rating

4.49

Year

2021

PhilosophySpiritualityContemporaryFictionArtModern And Contemporary Fiction

Description

Asle is an aging painter and widower who lives alone on the west coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbor, 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.

Written in melodious and hypnotic "slow prose," A New Name is the final installment of Jon Fosse’s Septology. It is an exquisite metaphysical novel about love, art, God, friendship, and the passage of time.

Endorsements

"With Septology, Fosse has found a new approach to writing fiction, different from what he has written before and—it is strange to say, as the novel enters its fifth century—different from what has been written before. Septology feels new." — Wyatt Mason, Harper's

"a major work of Scandinavian fiction" — Hari Kunzru