Septology
Quotes from the Book
...I just keep the mistakes and let them be wrong, because it’s often the mistakes that eventually lead to something right...
...everyone has a deep longing inside them, we always always long for something and we believe that what we long for is this or that, this person or that person, this thing or that thing, but actually we’re longing for God, because the human being is a continuous prayer, a person is a prayer through his or her longing...
...one of the most important things when it comes to painting is being able to stop at the right time, to know when a picture is saying what it can say, if you keep going too long then more often than not the picture’ll be ruined...
...a person comes from God and goes back to God, I think, for the body is conceived and born, it grows and declines, it dies and vanishes, but the spirit is a unity of body and soul, the way form and content are an invisible unity in a good picture...
it's almost like a language, because every language gives you access to its share of reality
Watch on YouTube
About Jon Fosse
More by Jon Fosse
About the book
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, ‘a major work of Scandinavian fiction’ (Hari Kunzru), 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. Written in melodious and hypnotic ‘slow prose’, I Is Another: Septology III-V is an exquisite metaphysical novel about love, art, God, f
The buzz
- The New York TimesReview in The New York Timesprofessional review (via Book Marks)
- The Wall Street JournalReview in The Wall Street Journalprofessional review (via Book Marks)
- The Times Literary SupplementReview in The Times Literary Supplementprofessional review (via Book Marks)
- Publishers WeeklyReview in Publishers Weeklyprofessional review (via Book Marks)
- HarpersReview in Harpersprofessional review (via Book Marks)
Keep reading
The Mountain Shadow
A Sudden Light
The Cave
This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn
The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have
The Zahir
Four Treasures of the Sky
Killing Commendatore
Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story
The Witch of Portobello
One Italian Summer
Someday
What You Are Looking for Is in the Library
Life Itself
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
A Place Called Here
The Pilgrimage
The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith, and Idiocy
Me
Stories of Your Life and Others
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Speak: Find Your Voice, Trust Your Gut, and Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be
A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
Like Streams to the Ocean: Notes on Ego, Love, and the Things That Make Us Who We Are
The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods
Belzhar
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Sorrows of an American
Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1
Flights
The Disappearance of the Universe: Straight Talk about Illusions, Past Lives, Religion, Sex, Politics, and the Miracles of Forgiveness
The Woman in the White Kimono
Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul
The Book of Form and Emptiness
The Book of Tomorrow
Slow Gods
Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
A Work in Progress
The Goldfinch
The Rent Collector
Kafka on the Shore
Dying to Know You
Everlasting
Grace for the Good Girl: Letting Go of the Try-Hard Life
Everything Sad Is Untrue
Will
Night Train to Lisbon
Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives
The Stories We Tell: Every Piece of Your Story Matters
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
The Power of Myth
Everything, Everything
Britt-Marie Was Here
All Our Wrong Todays
Turtles All the Way Down
Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
S.
The Artist's Way
Experimental Film

