A New Name Av Jon Fosse

<p>Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. In nearby Bjørgvin another Asle, also a painter, is lying in the hospital, consumed by alcoholism. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers – two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions.<br><br>In this final instalment of Jon Fosse’s <em>Septology</em>, the major prose work by ‘the Beckett of the twenty-first century’ (<em>Le Monde</em>), we follow the lives of the two Asles as younger adults in flashbacks: the narrator meets his lifelong love, Ales; joins the Catholic Church; and makes a living by trying to paint away all the pictures stuck in his mind. <em>A New Name: Septology VI-VII</em> is a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience – incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.</p>