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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.
Jon Fosse
Jon Fosse was born in 1959 on the west coast of Norway and has written over thirty books and twenty-eight plays that have been translated into over forty languages. His first novel, Red, Black, was published in 1983, and was followed by such works as Melancholy I & II, Aliss at the Fire, and Morning and Evening, available from Dalkey Archive Press. He is one of the world's most produced living playwrights. In 2007, Fosse became a chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite of France, and he was awarded the International Ibsen Award in 2010. He was awarded the European Prize for Literature in 2014, the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2015, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2023.
More by Jon Fosse
Damion Searls
Translated by
Damion Searls has translated more than a dozen books by Jon Fosse as well as books by many other classic modern writers; his own books, including The Inkblots and The Philosophy of Translation, have been translated into fourteen languages.
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