Septology

Jon Fosse's Septology is one of the most celebrated works of literary fiction of the twenty-first century — a Nobel Prize-winning meditation on identity, faith, solitude, and the mystery of the self, rendered in prose that reads less like a novel and more like a prayer.

The complete trilogy — The Other Name, I is Another, and A New Name — follows Asle, an aging Norwegian painter and widower living alone on the southwest coast of Norway. In the city of Bjørgvin lives another Asle: also a painter, but consumed by alcohol and despair. These two men are doppelgängers — two versions of the same life, each grappling with questions of death, love, light, shadow, faith, and hopelessness. Fosse's incantatory, hypnotic prose circles these questions with the patience of contemplative practice, arriving not at answers but at something deeper: presence itself.

For readers of contemplative and literary fiction, Septology is an experience unlike any other — for those drawn to silence and interiority, for seekers exploring faith through art and literature, for readers of Dostoevsky, Beckett, or Thomas Bernhard, and for anyone willing to slow down and be held by a work of rare and enduring beauty.

Explore more contemplative reading: Turn to Aflame: Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer for a meditation on silence and retreat, or The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy for a profound reckoning with mortality and what matters most.

What You'll Discover

• A complete Nobel Prize-winning trilogy in one volume — The Other Name, I is Another, and A New Name
• Fosse's signature incantatory, stream-of-consciousness prose — meditative, hypnotic, and utterly distinctive
• Themes of identity, duality, faith, mortality, and the mystery of existence
• A portrait of solitude, artistic vocation, and the quiet grace found at the edge of despair
• One of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, as selected by The New York Times

Jon Fosse is a Norwegian author and playwright widely regarded as one of the most important writers of his generation. Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature, he has written more than forty works — novels, plays, poetry, and essays — translated into over fifty languages. Septology is his magnum opus, and the work for which he received the Nobel Committee's recognition of "innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable."

Perfect for: Readers of contemplative and literary fiction, fans of Nobel Prize-winning literature, those drawn to stream-of-consciousness and meditative prose, readers of Beckett, Dostoevsky, or Peter Handke, seekers exploring faith and identity through literature, students of Scandinavian and European literary fiction, those who prize interiority and silence in narrative, readers of My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgård, and anyone seeking a transformative reading experience that rewards slowness and attention.

Complete trilogy in quality paperback | ISBN 9781945492754. Jon Fosse's Nobel Prize-winning Septology — a hypnotic, incantatory masterwork on identity, faith, and the mystery of being alive.