Oh my –  what in the world?  This was on the Booker International Short List for 2022 so I read it because it’ss the April Booker Reading Group selection.  (Each year we read the Short Lists for the Booker Prize and the Booker International Prize.)  

A New Name: Septology VI – VII 
by Jon Fosse
Translated from Norwegian by Damion Searls
2019 / 208 pages 
Read by Kyle Snyder 7h 17m
Rating 10 – / literary fiction 
(Both read and listened) 
(Book 3 of the Septology Series) 

National Book Award’s Judge’s Citation: 

I can only quote the New York Times 2/22/2022:

“Prayerful and reflective, Jon Fosse’s A New Name takes you into a dreamlike state of reading that re-orders perceptions of time and space, all while questioning the singularity of character. Damion Searls’ English version manages to convey both concreteness and ethereality, both the sensual and the transcendent. The book is no less than a stylistic and perspectival tour de force, which gives the impression that you have lived through an entire life, perhaps more than one, in communion with its characters.’  

This is the final book of Jon Fosse’s Septology trilogy. It’s not an easy read but for me it started to be very worthwhile about midway – when Meister Eckhart’s name showed up. I kind of figured out what was happening on my own and that took some effort and highlighting.  I’m very curious about the first 2 volumes of this incredible work.  

After a break of maybe a couple days I’m going to try Septalogy volumes 1 and 2 (including Parts 1-5 between them).  

Fosse hits all the usual themes, family, identity, love, art, death and then adds the less frequently seen these days, God, devotion, “thinking.” Meanwhile Fosse is playing with some devices of fiction like doppelgangers and inventive punctuation (no periods so the book is technically one long sentence). We also have “namesakes”using very similar names and fractured chronology going from the here and now to distant memory or a different point of view all in the same paragraph (or whatever).

It’s brilliant – I now have to go find those 2 books I missed.