Septology

A key work by one of the most important writers of our time

It's Advent and the ageing painter Asle is preparing for his annual Christmas exhibition. His regular life as a widower filled with work, memories of his beloved wife and conversations with his neighbour is disrupted by an unexpected event - his friend and alter ego of the same name needs help. And so Asle pendulates between his secluded home and the city, while travelling through time: The paths and individual stops serve as doors through which he returns to key moments in his life.

Through an inner monologue, divided into long rhythmic units and interrupted only by lucidly simple dialogues, we delve into two parallel lives, to consider art, faith, love and friendship. The insistently omnipresent death in the lives of the main characters is replaced by an Advent message of hope.

From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2023

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Books about life. About art. About love. About grace. But also about small-mindedness. And definitely about death. They should be read slowly, one by one, and then - after the seventh one - the reader should return to the first one. And he can read them without fail during the dark winter, for they carry light within them.
— Dagsavisen

In The Septology, Fosse discovered a new approach to writing fiction, different both from his previous works and, strange as it may seem given the 500-year history of the novel genre, from anything that had been written before. Septology seems like a brand new form.
— Harper's