Scenes from a Childhood

Scenes from a Childhood

Jon Fosse

Jon Fosse

Scenes from a Childhood is the latest collection of stories by Jon Fosse, one of Norway's most celebrated authors and playwrights, famed for the minimalist and unsettling quality of his writing. In the title work, a loosely autobiographical narrative covers infancy to awkward adolescence, unearthing the moments of childhood that linger longest in the imagination. In 'And Then My Dog Will Come Back To Me', a haunting and dream-like novella, a dispute between neighbours escalates to an inexorable climax. Taken from various sources, the texts gathered here together for the first time demonstrate that the short story is one of the recurrent modes of Fosse's imagination, and occasions some of his greatest works. 'Jon Fosse is a major European writer. He takes some effort, but that is only a sign of quality if you ask me.' – Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle.
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The Other Name

The Other Name

Jon Fosse

Jon Fosse

What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? The year is coming to a close and Asle, an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway, is reminiscing about his life. 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 about life, death, love, light and shadow, faith and hopelessness. Written in melodious and hypnotic 'slow prose',The Other Name: Septology I-II is an indelible and poignant exploration of the human condition by Jon Fosse, 'a major European writer' (Karl Ove Knausgaard), in which everything is always there, and past and present flow together.'Fosse has written a strange mystical moebius strip of a...
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I Is Another

I Is Another

Jon Fosse

Jon Fosse

Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbour, Asleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjorgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgangers - 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 Bjorgvin, 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, friendship, and the passage of time.
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Vaim

Vaim

Jon Fosse

Jon Fosse

By Nobel Laureate in Literature Jon Fosse, Vaim begins a trilogy of novels set in a remote Norwegian fishing village. Jatgeir travels from the fishing village of Vaim to the city in search of a needle and thread. Cheated twice, he returns to his boat, where he falls asleep as waves rock the hull. Soon he is awakened by a voice: a woman is calling his name from the quay. There stands Eline, the secret love of his youth—and the namesake of his boat—with a packed suitcase. Eline pleads to come aboard. In what follows, this single encounter reverberates across three stories: three narrators, three deaths.The first new work from Jon Fosse since he was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature, Vaim is a spectral novel that wanders and watches, imbued with things half-seen, perhaps not of this world yet still caught in its rhythms. The first in a trilogy of novels, it continues his investigation into the human condition: the...
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Aliss at the Fire

Aliss at the Fire

Jon Fosse

Jon Fosse

In her old house by the fjord, Signe lies on a bench and sees a vision of herself as she was more than twenty years earlier: standing by the window waiting for her husband Asle, on that terrible late November day when he took his rowboat out onto the water and never returned. Her memories widen out to include their whole life together, and beyond: the bonds of one family and their battles with implacable nature stretching back over five generations, to Asle's great-great- grandmother Aliss. In Jon Fosse's vivid, hallucinatory prose, all these moments in time inhabit the same space, and the ghosts of the past collide with those who still live on. Aliss at the Fire is a haunting exploration of love, ranking among the greatest meditations on marriage and loss.
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