Description
What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Asle, an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway, is reminiscing about his life. 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 about death, love, light and shadow, faith and hopelessness. Jon Fosse’s Septology is a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience – incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.
About the Author
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 Shining is his seventh work of fiction to appear with Fitzcarraldo Editions, after Scenes from a Childhood, The Other Name: Septology I–II, I is Another: Septology III–V, A New Name: Septology VI–VII, Aliss at the Fire and Melancholy I–II. In 2023, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Damion Searls is a translator from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch, and a writer in English. He has translated eight books and a libretto by Jon Fosse – Melancholy I (co-translated with Grethe Kvernes), Melancholy II, Aliss at the Fire, Morning and Evening (novel and libretto), Scenes from a Childhood, and the three books of Septology – and books by many other classic modern writers.
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