Jon Fosse Wins Nobel Prize for Literature, Becoming First Norwegian Since 2003
Jon Fosse is a master of spare Nordic literature. He has written plays, stories, and children’s books. On Thursday, he won the Nobel Prize in literature for works that “give voice to the unsayable.”
The head of the Nobel literature committee, Anders Olsson, said that Fosse’s work is based “in the language and nature of his Norwegian background.”
“I’m blown away and thankful. In a statement made by his publishing house, Samlaget, Fosse, 64, said, “I see this as an award for literature that wants to be literature above all else.”
Fosse has written about 40 plays, as well as novels, short stories, children’s books, poems, and essays. He is one of the most-performed playwrights in his country. The Swedish Academy, which gives out the prize, said it was “for his innovative plays and prose, which give voice to the unsayable.”
Mats Malm, the academy’s general secretary, called Fosse to tell him about the win. He said the writer was driving through the country and promised to be careful on the way home.
Fosse is the fourth writer from Norway to win the Nobel Prize. It was given to Bjrnstjerne Bjrnsen in 1903, Knut Hamsun in 1920, and Sigrid Undset in 1928.
In 2022, “A New Name: Septology VI-VII,” which was called Fosse’s “magnum opus” by Olsson, was one of the finalists for the International Booker Prize.
The Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel left a gift of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) to pay for the Nobel Prizes. At the award events in December, winners also get an 18-carat gold medal and a diploma.
Last year, French author Annie Ernaux won the prize for books based on her life in a small town in the Normandy area of northwest France. The Swedish Academy, which gives the prize, said that the books had “courage and clinical acuity.”
Ernaux was only the 17th woman out of 119 people to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. People have said for a long time that the literature prize is too focused on European and North American writers and that too many men win it.
In 2018, the award was put off because of accusations of sexual abuse that rocked the Swedish Academy, which chooses the Nobel literature committee, and caused members to leave. The academy changed, but it got more fire for giving the 2019 award to Peter Handke of Austria, who has been called a defender of Serbian war crimes.
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