THE Swedish Academy announced Thursday that the Norwegian author Jon Fosse has been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.”
Primarily writing in Norwegian, Fosse’s works have been compiled and translated into English and other languages. The Nobel Prize was awarded for his whole body of work.
Fosse has written more than three dozen plays as well as novels, short stories, children’s books, poetry and essays.
“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, 64, said via a statement released by the publishing house Samlaget.
Fosse’s debut novel, “Raudt, svart,” was published in 1983 and was hailed as “emotionally raw,” according to his bibliography from the Nobel Prize, broaching the theme of suicide and setting the tone for his later work. His European breakthrough came when his 1996 play “Nokon kjem til å komme,” was made in Paris in 1999, later translated in 2002 as “Someone Is Going to Come.”
Nobel Prize organizers dubbed Fosse’s prose magnum opus as ‘’Septology,’’
completed in 2021 and compiling of: “Det andre namnet,” published in 2019 and translated to “The Other Name” in 2020; “Eg er ein annan,” published in 2020 and translated to “I is Another”; and “Eit nytt namn,” published in2021 and translated to “A New Name.”
