A New Name: Septology VI-VII

Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. In nearby Bjorgvin another Asle, also a painter, is lying in the hospital, consumed by alcoholism. Asle and Asle are doppelgangers - 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), 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. A New Name: Septology VI-VII is a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience - incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.