STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Norwegian writer Jon Fosse for “his innovative plays and prose that give voice to the unsayable,” according to the Swedish Academy.
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One of his country’s most performed playwrights, Fosse, 64, has written around 40 plays as well as novels, short stories, children’s books, poems and essays.
Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the academy, announced the award on Thursday in Stockholm. Malm said he reached Fosse by phone to inform him of the price and the fact that the writer was traveling in the country, and promised to drive home carefully.
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Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Literature Committee, said Fosse’s work was “rooted in the language and nature of his Norwegian background.”
Last year, French author Annie Ernaux won the prize for what the award-giving Swedish Academy called “the courage and clinical acuity” of books rooted in her small-town origins in Normandy, northwest France.
A rehearsal in 2021 for the premiere of the opera “Sleepless,” adapted from a trilogy by Jon Fosse. Photo by Nina Hansch/Picture Alliance via Getty Images
Ernaux was only the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel Prize winners for literature. The literary prize has long been criticized for being too focused on European and North American writers and too dominated by men.
In 2018, the awards ceremony was postponed after allegations of sexual abuse rocked the Swedish Academy, which appoints the Nobel Literature Committee, and sparked an exodus of members. The academy renewed itself but faced greater criticism for giving the 2019 award to Austrian Peter Handke, described as a Serbian war crimes apologist.
On Wednesday, the chemistry prize was awarded to Moungi Bawendi of MIT, Louis Brus of Columbia University and Alexei Ekimov of Nanocrystals Technology Inc. They were honored for their work with tiny particles called quantum dots – tiny particles that can emit very bright colored light and whose applications in everyday life include electronics and medical imaging.
Earlier this week, Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman received the Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday for discoveries that enabled the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.
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On Tuesday, the physics prize went to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz for the first split-second glimpse into the superfast world of spinning electrons.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded on Friday and the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences will end the awards season on Monday.
The Nobel Prizes are endowed with 11 million Swedish crowns (1 million US dollars) and come from an estate of the prize creator, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. Winners will also receive an 18-karat gold medal and diploma when they accept their Nobel Prizes at the awards ceremonies in December.
Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands.