2023 Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Norwegian author Jon Fosse

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.” 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.

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.

• BREAKING NEWS
  The 2023 #NobelPrize in Literature is awarded to the Norwegian author Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” pic.twitter.com/dhJgGUawMl

  — The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 5, 2023 " class="align-text-top noRightClick twitterSection" data="

  BREAKING NEWS
  The 2023 #NobelPrize in Literature is awarded to the Norwegian author Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” pic.twitter.com/dhJgGUawMl

  — The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 5, 2023

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  BREAKING NEWS
  The 2023 #NobelPrize in Literature is awarded to the Norwegian author Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” pic.twitter.com/dhJgGUawMl

  — The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 5, 2023

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.

Previous Nobel Prizes in Literature: The Nobel Prize in Literature 2022 was awarded to Annie Ernaux “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”.

Abdulrazak Gurnah got the coveted award in 2021 “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2020 was awarded to Louise Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”.

Did you know?

• 115 Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded since 1901.
• 4 literature prizes have been shared between two persons.
• 17 women have been awarded the literature prize so far.
• 41 years was the age of the youngest literature laureate ever, Rudyard Kipling, best known for The Jungle Book.
• 88 years was the age of the oldest literature laureate ever, Doris Lessing, when she was awarded the prize in 2007