Jon Fosse

An elegiac meditation on our unlived lives, from the author of Scenes from a Childhood.

Septology I-II

The Other Name

Strange, haunting and dreamlike, A Shining is the latest work of fiction by Jon Fosse, 'the Beckett of the twenty-first century' (Le Monde).

A Shining

Written in melodious and hypnotic 'slow prose', Septology is an indelible and poignant exploration of the human condition by Jon Fosse, 'a major European writer' (Karl Ove Knausgaard).

Septology

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 final instalment of Jon Fosse's Septology, the major prose work by 'the Beckett of the twenty-first century' (Le Monde), Christmas is approaching. Tradition has it that Åsleik and Asle eat lutefisk together, but this year Asle has agreed for the first time to celebrate Christmas with Åsleik and his sister, Guro. On Christmas Eve, Åsleik, Asle, and the dog Bragi take Åsleik's boat out on the Sygnefjord. Meanwhile, we follow the lives of the two Asles as younger adults in flashbacks: the narrator meets his lifelong love, Ales; joins the Catholic Church; starts exhibiting with Beyer; and can make a living by trying to paint away all the pictures stuck in his mind. After a while, Asle and Ales leave the city and move to the house in Dylgja. The other Asle gets married too, but his wedding ends with a sobbing bride and is followed soon after by a painful breakup. Written in melodious and hypnotic 'slow prose', A New Name: Septology VI-VII is a transcendent exploration of the human condition by Jon Fosse, and a radically other reading experience - incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.

Septology VI-VII

A New Name

Septology III-V

I is Another

A child who will be named Johannes is born. An old man named Johannes dies. Between these two points, Jon Fosse gives us the details of an entire life, starkly compressed. Beginning with Johannes's father's thoughts as his wife goes into labor, and ending with Johannes's own thoughts as he embarks upon a day in his life when everything is exactly the same, yet totally different, Morning and Evening is a novel concerning the beautiful dream that our lives have meaning.

Morning and Evening

Damion Searls

A visionary masterpiece from “the new Ibsen.”

Aliss at the Fire (Norwegian Literature Series)

A haunting collection from one of Norway's most celebrated writers.

Scenes from a Childhood

Lars Hertervig is a provincial young Norwegian from a poor Quaker background, studying art in Germany and prone to crippling insecurities, sexual obsessions, and terrifying hallucinations. In prose as hypnotic as Beckett's or Bernhard's - but earthier, and funnier - the novel describes a single day of crisis and its repercussions, years later for Lars himself and a century later for a writer inspired by Hertervig's vision. Melancholy takes us deep inside a painter's fragile consciousness, vulnerable to everything but therefore uniquely able to see its beauty and its light.

Melancholy

In her old house by the fjord, Signe lies on a bench and sees a vision of herself as she was more than twenty years earlier: standing by the window waiting for her husband Asle, on that terrible late November day when he took his rowboat out onto the water and never returned. Her memories widen out to include their whole life together, and beyond: the bonds of one family and their battles with implacable nature stretching back over five generations, to Asle's great-great- grandmother Aliss. In Jon Fosse's vivid, hallucinatory prose, all these moments in time inhabit the same space, and the ghosts of the past collide with those who still live on. Aliss at the Fire is a haunting exploration of love, ranking among the greatest meditations on marriage and loss.

Aliss at the Fire

The celebrated Norwegian novelist's magnum opus, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, published in one volume for the first time. 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. 'Jon Fosse is a major European writer.' - Karl Ove Knausgaard 'The Beckett of the twenty-first century.' - Le Monde 'An extraordinary seven-novel sequence about an old man's recursive reckoning with the braided realities of God, art, identity, family life and human life itself...the culminating project of an already major career.' - Randy Boyagoda, New York Times 'A major work of Scandinavian fiction ...Fosse has written a strange mystical moebius strip of a novel, in which an artist struggles with faith and loneliness, and watches himself, or versions of himself, fall away into the lower depths.' - Hari Kunzru 'I hesitate to compare the experience of reading these works to the act of meditation. But that is the closest I can come to describing how something in the critical self is shed in the process of reading Fosse, only to be replaced by something more primal. A mood. An atmosphere. The sound of words moving on a page.' - Ruth Margalit, The New York Review of Books

Trilogy is Jon Fosse's critically acclaimed, luminous love story about Asle and Alida, two lovers trying to find their place in this world. Homeless and sleepless, they wander around Bergen in the rain, trying to make a life for themselves and the child they expect. Through a rich web of historical, cultural, and theological allusions, Fosse constructs a modern parable of injustice, resistance, crime, and redemption. Consisting of three novellas (Wakefulness, Olav's Dreams, and Weariness), Trilogy is a haunting, mysterious, and poignant evocation of love, for which Fosse received The Nordic Council's Prize for Literature in 2015.

Trilogy

A Silent Language

Shining

Melancholy I-II

Sabahtan Aksama

Trilogien

roman

Morgon og kveld

One of Jon Fosse's most acclaimed novels, Boathouse is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator leading a largely hermit-like existence until he unexpectedly encounters a long-lost childhood friend and his wife. Told partially in a stream-of-consciousness style and with an atmosphere reminiscent of a gripping crime novel, Boathouse slowly unravels the story of a love triangle leading to jealousy, betrayal, and eventually death.

Jon Fosse

Books

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