1 April 2020
Jon Fosse’s The Other Name describes two consecutive days in the life of its narrator Asle, a painter and widower who lives alone in a remote house in Dylgja. Another identical Asle, also a painter, lives in the nearby town of Bjørgvin. Fosse’s book moves quietly between these two men, two versions of the same person, on different paths.
I
No one saw the avalanche because it all fell apart so slowly. Not day by day, not even hour by hour, or minute by minute, but it fell apart. It was falling apart the whole time, and it was an avalanche. It had to be an avalanche, because what else could it be?
The novel Vaim is the first book to be published by Jon Fosse after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023. It will be launched in connection with the opening of DIFF 2025.
I was standing outside The Vaim General Store with this fishing set in my hand, and I thought why in the world had I bought myself a fishing rod, no, it had never once crossed my mind to buy fishing gear, because what was I supposed to do with it, it’s true I had liked fishing when I was a boy, but, yes, that was quite a long time ago, still for all I knew it might be fun to stand there on The Quay and cast out the line and reel it in again, maybe, I thought and either way The Shopkeeper was a very good salesman, that was for sure, once you walk through the door of his shop there’s no getting away from him, yes, I thought, and what now, well I’d been thinking I would go to the restaurant, to get dinner, yes because it had been several days since I’d had good hot food, so it would taste good, I thought, and besides I was probably pretty curious to see what it was like in that restaurant, but was I actually allowed to go in there carrying this fishing gear, because I didn’t want to go back up to my room with it, because who knows, maybe I’d run into The Hotel Owner again, maybe with all Brita’s nosiness she’s gone up to my room again to see what I have in my suitcases, yes, she probably has, definitely, since I had nothing to hide she could look at every last thing in there if it made her happy, as far as I was concerned, but it was a bit ridiculous, that Brita woman wasn’t entirely on the level, I thought and I noticed that I had started walking down towards The Quay, not that I wanted to go fishing now, but sooner or later I’d have to try my hand at casting a line or two, I thought, but for now I just wanted go down to The Quay to look around before I went into the restaurant, Vaim Restaurant yes, I thought and I stopped and stood there and looked at the boat tied up there on The Quay, and it was a beautiful boat, big for the kind of boat it was, and the roof extended to almost cover the whole boat, and that was probably just as well, since it rained so much in this part of the country, and the boat was nicely lacquered, yes, the varnish was so shiny that it glittered, yes that boat was a sight to see, and the name it had, Eline, that was a beautiful name, I felt, but now it really was probably time to get some food in me, yes, I thought and then I cut across the parking lot towards the door with Vaim Restaurant painted on it and I opened the door and I could see it was bright and cozy in the restaurant, and a guy was sitting at a table in the far corner of the restaurant, about my age, he had a beer bottle and a glass on the table in front of him and he sat there staring into space, and he didn’t notice that someone had come into the restaurant, he just sat there staring into space like before, there weren’t that many tables in the restaurant, but they were nice old wooden tables, and there were wooden chairs like the one I had in my room around the tables, four wooden chairs for each table, and then on the left there was a counter with a cash register and the menu was written on a kind of blackboard on the wall behind the counter, and there were three dishes to choose from, meatballs, fishcakes, and stew, and below that it said that dessert was fruit cocktail with ice cream and that was it, and then there on the counter there was indeed a sheep bell, just like Brita had said and I went and leaned the fishing set against the wall behind the nearest table, the one closest to the door, and so the farthest away from the man sitting drinking a beer and staring straight ahead, and then I went over to the counter and picked up the sheep bell and shook it, and damn it made a loud sound, so I quickly put it back down on the counter, and the man sitting there with his glass of beer was still only staring straight ahead, yes yes, I thought and I guessed I had to just stand there at the counter and wait, I thought and all of this taken together really was a bit strange, I thought, The Vaim Hotel and The Vaim Restaurant and The Vaim General Store, yes, everything was kind of odd, and I wasn’t so sure whether I liked it or not, no, there was almost something unreal about it all, I thought, and my car, I saw it when I left the store, didn’t I, no, maybe not and I think I should go look out the door to see if it’s there, and I go to the door and I open it, go outside, and yes, well, the car is right where I parked it, so as I can see everything’s fine, I think and I go over to the car and I think that I should check to make sure the doors are locked and they are, every door, and so I should probably go back to the restaurant then, because somebody who can serve me probably has to come soon, I think and I go back into the restaurant and as soon as I’m through the door I see Brita standing there holding up the fishing set and she looks at me
Original title: Vaim Hotell
Publisher: Samlaget, 2026
Genre: Novel
Hotel is the second of three books about the fictional small town of Vaim, each with different characters.
It is a strange story about The Guest and a hotel owner named Brita. The Guest checks into the empty Vaim Hotel, where the commanding and powerful owner Brita holds sway in partnership with The Businessman. The Guest is tricked and lied to and goes from being a guest to working for Brita.
To be published in 2026.
The Other Name: Septology I-II
by Jon Fosse
tr. Damion Searls
(Fitzcarraldo, Oct. 2019; Transit, April 2020)
Reviewed by Spencer Ruchti
Not long into Part I of Jon Fosse’s Septology, the narrator, Asle, confesses to speaking with the dead. His young wife, Ales, has killed herself; this suicide becomes the mournful obsession of Fosse’s seven-part novel. “There’s no big difference or distance between life and death, between the living and the dead, even though the difference can seem insurmountable it isn’t,” Asle thinks. In the four decades following the publication of his first book, Raudt, svart, Jon Fosse has written repeatedly on suicide, melancholy, excruciating loss, the role or absence of God, and the border between this life and whatever follows. To read his enormous body of work in panorama is to see the frequent exchanges between the living and the dead, but also beautiful white visions as the curtain draws shut. “The whole of Septology is possibly just an instant, a loaded one, a moment of death. When a person dies it is said that one sees life repeated. Septology can maybe read as such a moment,” Fosse has said in an interview with his Norwegian editor Cecilie Seiness. This “instantaneous” novel of moments is also the longest Fosse ever written. One can’t help but assign it the reverence of a denouement as the author approaches the twilight of his career.
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| Jon Fosse |
A BOOK OF THE DAY
The new Nobel laureate’s latest novella is a shimmering fable about a man lost in a dark forest
Lauren Groff
Saturday 18 November 2023
O
Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls
2023 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
In Fosse's first novel since his critically acclaimed Septology, a man starts driving without knowing where he is going. He alternates between turning right and left, and ultimately finds himself stuck at the end of a forest road. It soon grows dark and begins to snow. But instead of searching for help, he ventures, foolishly, into the dark forest. Inevitably the man gets lost, and as he grows cold and tired, he encounters a glowing being amid the obscurity. Strange, haunting and dreamlike, A Shining is the latest work of fiction by National Book Award-finalist Jon Fosse, “the Beckett of the twenty-first century” (Le Monde).
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| Jon Fosse |
The author finally achieved global recognition with his Nobel prize in literature, but he has been winning fans with his mesmerising prose and elemental plays for years
Jem Bartholomew
Friday 6 October 2023
When Ben Willows, a 23-year-old actor in London, was working a shift at his day job in Waterstones last September, he read the blurb of Jon Fosse’s The Other Name.
It was so striking that Willows then spent his whole afternoon break – in the cramped staff room with uncomfortable chairs and glaring fluorescent lights – devouring it. “I was absolutely transported,” he says.
The book is the first in the Septology series by the Norwegian author who on Thursday was awarded the Nobel literature prize.
“He manages to say these absolute truths and philosophies in really subtle ways,” Willows says, “and also captures thought. I think that’s what drew me in.
“I was like, yeah, that’s how I think: I careen from one thought to another, which flows into a memory, which cuts to something from years earlier that then brings me back to now.”
On receiving the Nobel award, Fosse said he was “overwhelmed, and somewhat frightened. I see this as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations.”
The Guardian spoke to readers about what they enjoy about Fosse’s work and how it has affected their lives.
‘He brings hope’ … Jon Fosse. Photograph: Hakon Mosvold Larsen
Linda Zachrison, artistic director at Göteborgs Stadsteater, loves how Fosse is “a magician of writing what’s not said”.
“He has his own language,” Zachrison says. “When you read his plays, it’s like breathing in a new way.” In 1999, Zachrison helped bring a theatre production of Fosse’s to Stockholm’s Stadsteater.
Zachrison, 50, says plays like Someone Is Going to Come and The Name have taught her to see and approach the world in new ways. “I remember being very moved and touched, and feeling empathy for all the people that he portrayed – and also feeling empathy for the world around me … and how we’re all struggling.”
Zachrison is drawn to how Fosse’s work explores “how hard it can be just to communicate with each other,” and how language can become “an obstacle instead of a tool for understanding”.
“He’s very existential, in a way. He shows the fragility of being here,” Zachrison says, and the complexities of “how thin the line is between enjoyment or love; irritation or attraction; a wish to reach out or neglect. It’s a simpleness in his writing that opens up an extreme complexity.”
Fosse’s books in the UK are printed by London-based independent publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions, which has now won three of the past five Nobel literature prizes, with Annie Ernaux (2022) and Olga Tokarczuk (2018).
John Stout, a 69-year-old retired computer science teacher in Greater Manchester, discovered Fosse by chance after taking out a Fitzcarraldo subscription.
He received a copy of Aliss at the Fire, about a woman, Signe, in her old house by a fjord who sees a vision of herself 20 years ago – when her husband failed to return from the water on his rowboat.
“Even now,” Stout says, “I get a slight shiver” thinking about that night on the water and the “sense of impending doom”.
For Stout, it brought up memories of sailing with his father in Scotland as a boy; they sometimes sailed to the Isle of Man, and the children would have to stay quiet during the BBC shipping forecast. “She’s looking back and you get this feeling of these other generations who are there in the house, and are in her thoughts all the time.”
Camilla Bauer, a 51-year-old translator and writer in Stockholm, says that Fosse’s award is particularly poignant amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“He has a deep empathy, he can go down and really analyse where things went wrong – why people become bullies or violent – but there’s always a kind empathy,” Bauer says.
“In these days of war and cynical people killing each other, I think this was very timely. He tackles dark themes, but he shows us where things go wrong and brings hope.”
Bauer first encountered Fosse around 2010, when she went to a day dedicated to his work in Stockholm. She remembers the psychological immediacy of his dramas. As in his plays, “I have been in spaces” where people try to “take away your space, where everything you say is wrong,” leading you to withdraw into yourself – which Fosse captures so well.
Alongside novels and poetry, Fosse has written more than 30 plays and is the most-performed Norwegian playwright since Henrik Ibsen.
Chris Lee, a 59-year-old Irish playwright in London, says he is “mesmerised” by Fosse’s work. His ability to mix theatricality and poetry makes his writing “a weird combination of Harold Pinter and Seamus Heaney in a Norwegian fjord”, Lee says. With his plays, there’s a “prayer-like effect” and an “ethereal force” that stays with you.
Lee says that, being a playwright himself, there are “many moments in your life when nothing’s happening, and you feel that maybe nothing will ever happen again”. But Fosse’s writing has been “a great source of confidence” and taught him that “ploughing your own furrow is the best thing to do”.
It’s brilliant for playwrights that Fosse was been awarded the Nobel, Lee adds, so it’s “a time for celebration”.
THE GUARDIAN
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| Jon Fosse |
In 2012, the Norwegian novelist and playwright collapsed. He gave up drinking, retreating from the public eye – then, earlier this month, he got a call from the Swedish academy. He discusses how it feels to win a Nobel prize
Chris PowerOn the day this year’s Nobel prize in literature was announced, Jon Fosse went for a drive in the countryside outside Bergen to relax. “I was nervous before the announcement,” says the Norwegian playwright and author, with a laugh. He has been a fixture on bookies’ lists of Nobel favourites since 2013, so he felt, “you know, ‘It could be me.’ But I didn’t think it would be me.”
