Stockholm:The 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Norwegian author Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.”
Jon Fosse’s breakthrough as a dramatist came with the 1999 production of his play ‘Nokon kjem til å komme’ (1996; ‘Someone Is Going to Come’, 2002). With its themes of fearful anticipation and crippling jealousy, Fosse’s singularity is fully evident, the Nobel Academy said as they announced the award.
"His immense oeuvre written in Norwegian Nynorsk and spanning a variety of genres consists of a wealth of plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations. While he is today one of the most widely performed playwrights in the world, he has also become increasingly recognised for his prose," the Swedish Academy said in a statement released on its website shortly after the announcement.
It is through laureate Jon Fosse’s ability to evoke man’s loss of orientation, and how this paradoxically can provide access to a deeper experience close to divinity, that he has come to be regarded as a major innovator in contemporary theatre, the statement added. "Fosse presents everyday situations that are instantly recognisable in our own lives. His radical reduction of language and dramatic action expresses the most powerful human emotions of anxiety and powerlessness in the simplest terms," the Academy said.