Norwegian author and dramatist Jon Fosse won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable,” the Swedish academy said.
Born in Haugesund in 1959, Fosse has an expansive oeuvre of work that includes 40 plays, multiple novels, poetry and essay collections, children’s books and translations. His works have been translated into more than 40 languages, and his plays, which include Someone Is Going to Come, Dream of Autumn and I Am the Wind, are some of the most widely performed in the world. His dramatic work often draws comparisons to Samuel Beckett and Henrik Ibsen.
He has won prestigious European awards and has long been fully subsidized by the Norway government, with a lifetime stipend and a residence near the Royal Palace in Oslo. In 2007, he was made a Knight in France’s National Order of Merit.
His work “touches on the deepest feelings that you have, anxieties, insecurities, questions of life and death,” Swedish Academy member Anders Olsson said.
