(Stockholm) The 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded Thursday to Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse for “his innovative plays,” the jury announced.
The Swedish Academy honored the 64-year-old writer “for his innovative plays and prose that gave voice to the unspeakable.”
“I am overwhelmed and grateful. I consider that this is an award for literature which aims above all to be literature, without any other consideration,” reacted Jon Fosse in a press release.
Born September 29, 1959 in Haugesund, Norway, Jon Fosse is a jack-of-all-trades writer who is not easily accessible to the general public. However, he is one of the living authors whose plays are the most performed in Europe.
Fosse emerged as a playwright on the European stage thanks to his play “Someone is going to come”, directed by Claude Régy in 1999 in Paris.
His novel “The Boathouse” (1989) won him critical esteem.
When Jon Fosse heard the news, “he was driving through the countryside, towards the fjord north of Bergen in Norway,” Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said after the announcement.
“We had the opportunity to start talking about practical issues and the Nobel week in December,” he added.
His work, similar to that of Samuel Beckett, shares the pessimistic vision of his predecessors, according to Jon Fosse’s biography published by the Academy.