I Is Another: Septology III-V - Paperback

by Jon Fosse (Author), Damion Searls (Translator)

A New York Times Editors' Choice

"Fosse's portrait of intersecting lives is that rare metaphysical novel that readers will find compulsively readable."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

I is Another follows the lives of two men living close to each other on the west coast of Norway. The year is coming to a close and Asle, an aging painter and widower, is reminiscing about his life. He lives alone, his only friends being his neighbor, Åsleik, a bachelor and traditional Norwegian fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in Bj rgvin, a couple hours' drive south of Dylgja, where he lives. There, in Bj rgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter. He and the narrator are doppelgangers--two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life. I is Another calls into question concrete notions around subjectivity and the self. What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another?

Author Biography

Jon Fosse is one of Norway's most celebrated authors and playwrights. He 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.