Norwegian playwright and author Jon Fosse wins the Nobel Prize in literature

Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, a master of spare Nordic literature in a sprawling oeuvre that includes plays, novels and children’s books, won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for works that “give voice to the unsayable.” Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel literature committee, said Fosse’s impressive output is rooted “in the language and nature of his Norwegian background.” One of his country’s most-performed dramatists, Fosse said he had “cautiously prepared” himself for a decade to receive the news that he had won. “It was a great joy for me to get the phone call.” The author of 40 plays as well as novels, short stories, children’s books, poetry and essays, Fosse was honored “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable,” according to the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize. His major prose works include “Melancholy”; “Morning and Evening,” whose two parts depict a birth and a death; “Wakefulness”; and “Olav’s Dreams.” His plays, which have been staged across Europe and in the United States, include “The Name,” “Dream of Autumn” and “I Am the Wind.” His work “A New Name: Septology VI-VII,” described by Olsson as Fosse’s “magnum opus,” was a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2022. “All of Norway offers congratulations and is proud today!” In a statement released by his publishing house, Samlaget, Fosse said he saw the prize “as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations.” Last year, French author Annie Ernaux won the prize for what the prize-giving Swedish Academy called “the courage and clinical acuity” of books rooted in her small-town background in the Normandy region of northwest France.