Norwegian author Jon Fosse has won the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable,” the Swedish Academy announced on Thursday.
Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Literature, described Fosse as one of the most recognised and widely performed playwrights of our time.
He is also acclaimed for his novels, children’s books, short stories, essays and poetry.
Fosse, born in 1959, has a heavily pared down style that has come to be known as “Fosse minimalism,” the academy said, adding that his writing exposed man’s loss of orientation.
He also translates other authors’ works into Norwegian.
His immense “oeuvre spans a variety of genres,” the academy added in a statement.
“Eg er vinden’’ (I am the Wind) is one of his most famous plays while the novel trilogy “Andvake” (Wakefulness), “Olavs draumar” (Olav’s Dreams) and “ Kveldsvævd” (Weariness) have been widely lauded.
He spent his childhood and youth in a small village on a fjord on the west coast of Norway.
Here he found inspiration for his prose and plays which have been translated into 40 languages and performed on major stages around the world since the mid-1990s.
His compatriots celebrate him as the most successful Norwegian playwright since Henrik Ibsen.
Last year’s winner was French writer Annie Ernaux.
She was only the 17th woman among the 120 Nobel Prize winners in literature to date.
In recent years, the prize has been awarded alternately to men and women.
The Nobel laureates in medicine, physics and chemistry were announced from Monday to Wednesday in Stockholm, with the Nobel Peace Prize following on Friday in Oslo.
The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences would be awarded on Monday.
The awards are traditionally presented to the winners on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), the inventor of dynamite and founder of the prizes.
In 2023, the awards came with 11 million Swedish kronor (999,000 dollars) per category, 1 million kronor more than last year.
Awarded since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature is a Swedish literature prize awarded to an author who has produced the most outstanding work in an `idealistic direction’
In his last will and testament, Alfred Nobel stated that his money be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the greatest benefit on mankind.
He stipulated that the award be given in such disciplines as physics, literature, medicine, physiology, chemistry and peace.
Only six Africans, namely Wole Soyinka (Nigeria,1986), Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt, 1988), Nadine Gordimer (South Africa, 1991), John Coetzee (South Africa, 2003), Doris Lessing (Zimbabwe, 2007) and Abdulrazak Gurnah (Tanzania, 2021) have won the prize.
