Norwegian Playwright Jon Fosse Wins Nobel Literature Prize (Photo)

 

Norway's Jon Fosse has won this year's Nobel Literature Prize.

 

The Swedish Academy gave him the award on Thursday.

 

His plays are among the most widely staged of any contemporary playwright in the world.

 

He was honoured “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”, the Swedish Academy said.

 

“I am overwhelmed and grateful. I see this as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations,” Fosse said in a statement immediately after the announcement.

 

The chairman of the Nobel committee, Anders Olsson, told reporters Fosse had “come to be regarded as an innovator” through his “ability to evoke … loss of orientation, and how this paradoxically can provide access to a deeper experience, close to divinity”.

 

Fosse’s writing is defined more by form than content, where what is not said is often more revealing than what is.

 

Often compared to Samuel Beckett, his work is minimalistic, relying on simple language which delivers its message through rhythm, melody and silence.

 

His major works include “Boathouse” (1989), which was well-received by critics, and “Melancholy” I and II (1995-1996).

 

Fosse, 64, had featured widely in Nobel speculation for several years.

 

“His immense oeuvre written in Norwegian Nynorsk (one of Norway’s written forms of languages) and spanning a variety of genres consists of a wealth of plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations”, the jury said.

 

 

Fosse grew up in a family which followed a strict form of Lutheranism and rebelled by playing in a band and declaring himself an atheist.

 

He ended up converting to Catholicism in 2013.

 

After studying literature, he made his debut in 1983 with the novel “Red, Black” which moves back and forth in time and between perspectives.

 

His latest book, “Septology”, a semi-autobiographical magnum opus — seven parts spread across three volumes about a man who meets another version of himself — runs to 1,250 pages without a single full stop.

 

The third volume was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.

 

Struggling to make ends meet as an author in the early 1990s, Fosse was asked to write the start of a play.

 

“I knew, I felt, that this kind of writing was made for me,” he once said in an interview with a French theatre website.

 

He enjoyed the form so much he wrote the entire play, entitled “Someone is Going to Come”.

 

He went on to win international acclaim for his next play, “And We’ll Never be Parted”, in 1994.

 

His work has been translated into around 50 languages.