Reuters
[Source: Reuters]
Norwegian author and dramatist Jon Fosse won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable,” the award-giving body said.
Born in 1959 in Haugesund on Norway’s west coast, Fosse is best known for his dramas, though his writing spans poetry, essays, children’s books and translations.
His work “touches on the deepest feelings that you have, anxieties, insecurities, questions of life and death,” Swedish Academy member Anders Olsson said.
“It has a sort of universal impact of everything that he writes. And it doesn’t matter if it is drama, poetry or prose, it the same kind of appeal of basic humanism,” Olsson said.
Fosse, seen as a long-time contender for the prize and among this year’s favourites in the betting odds, said he was “overwhelmed and somewhat frightened” by the award.
“I see this as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations,” he said in a statement.
The 64-year-old is the fourth Norwegian and the first since 1928 to win the Nobel Prize for literature, this year worth 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1 million).
“I was surprised but at the same time, in a sense, I wasn’t,” he told Swedish public broadcaster SVT.
“I’ve been part of the discussion for ten years and have more or less carefully prepared myself for ten years that it could happen.”
There were now no more big prizes to win, he told Norwegian broadcaster TV2. “Everything will be downhill from now on.”
Past winners of the literature prize include Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez and American John Steinbeck, alongside singer songwriter Bob Dylan and Britain’s Second World War prime minister Winston Churchill.
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