This year’s Nobel Prize for Literature goes to the Norwegian Jon Fosse. The 64-year-old playwright is being honored “for his innovative plays and prose” that “give voice to the unsayable,” according to the Nobel Committee in Stockholm.
Norwegian author Jon Fosse receives the Nobel Prize for Literature. This was announced by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. He received the award “for his innovative plays and prose, which give a voice to the unspeakable,” it said. The author’s works, which are known for their highly reduced style of “Fosse minimalism”, were highlighted.
Fosse is one of Norway’s most successful playwrights. The 64-year-old has written around 40 plays. There are also novels, short stories, children’s books, poems and essays. The Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, Mats Malm, said he informed Fosse of his award by telephone. Fosse was just driving; he promised to drive carefully.
Fosse told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that he was surprised to receive the call, “but at the same time it wasn’t. I have been carefully preparing for the possibility that this could happen over the past ten years. It was a great pleasure for me to receive it to receive a call.”
Three other writers from Norway have already received the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1903 the award went to Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, in 1920 to Knut Hamsun and in 1928 to Sigrid Undset.
Childhood and youth spent on the coast
Fosse was born in the Norwegian coastal town of Haugesund in 1959 and spent his childhood and youth there. Here he found inspiration for his prose and plays, which have been translated into 40 languages and have been performed on major stages around the world since the mid-1990s. His compatriots celebrate him as the most successful Norwegian playwright since Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906).
Language – be it in poetry, on stage or elsewhere – occupies a central place in Fosse’s life. His novels and plays often have something melancholic, dark and mystical about them. His most recent work published in German is the novel “I is another”.
Even as an adult, Fosse prefers the quiet of small towns to the hustle and bustle of big cities. His retreat near Bergen, for example, or the Austrian town of Hainburg on the Danube, where he temporarily lives with his Slovakian wife.
Fosse has been a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin since 2022. In 2015, he received the Nordic Council Literature Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in Scandinavia, for his prose work “Trilogy”.
Awards gala on December 10th
Last year the Nobel Prize in Literature went to the French writer Annie Ernaux. The prize is worth eleven million Swedish kroner (currently around 950,000 euros).
The awards gala traditionally takes place on December 10th in Sweden’s capital Stockholm, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. In 2021, the London-based Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah was honored with the Nobel Prize, the first time an African author had been honored in 18 years. In 2020, the American poet Louise Glück received the prestigious award.
From 1901 to 2022, 115 Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded to 119 people. So far, 17 women have been honored. The French poet Sully Prudhomme received the first Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901. German-speaking authors have been honored 13 times so far, including Thomas Mann (1929), Heinrich Böll (1972), Günter Grass (1999), Herta Müller (2009) and most recently Peter Handke (2019).