The 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded on 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 believe that this is a prize for literature that aims above all to be literature, without any other consideration,” reacted Jon Fosse in a press release.
Born on September 29, 1959 in Haugesund, Norway, Jon Fosse is a jack of all trades who is not easily accessible to the general public. However, he is one of the living authors whose plays are most frequently performed in Europe.
With his play “Someone is gonna come,” which Claude Régy staged in Paris in 1999, Fosse entered the European stage as a playwright.
His novel The Boathouse (1989) earned him critical acclaim.
When Jon Fosse heard the news, “he drove 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 talk about practical issues and Nobel Week in December,” he added.
His work is similar to that of Samuel Beckett and shares the pessimistic vision of his predecessors, says Jon Fosse’s biography published by the academy.