Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
NEW YORK, 7th Oct. Nobel literature committee on Friday announced that Jon Fosse, one of Norway’s most performed dramatists who has written some 40 plays as well as novels, short stories, children’s books, poetry and essays is the winner of Nobel Prize in Literature.
Fosse, a master of spare Nordic writing in a sprawling body of work ranging from plays to novels and children’s books, won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for works that “give voice to the unsayable.”
Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel literature committee, said Fosse’s work is rooted “in the language and nature of his Norwegian background.”
Fosse, 64, told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK “I was surprised when they called, yet at the same time not. I have cautiously prepared myself for the possibility that this could happen in the past 10 years,”
“It was a great joy for me to get the phone call.”
The Swedish Academy said it was “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.”
Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the academy, reached Fosse by telephone to inform him of the win.
He said the writer was driving in the countryside and promised to drive home carefully.
Fosse is the fourth Norwegian writer to get the literature prize.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson got it in 1903, Knut Hamsun was awarded it in 1920 and Sigrid Undset in 1928.
Fosse’s work “A New Name: Septology VI-VII” — described by Olsson as Fosse’s “magnum opus” was a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2022.
In a statement released by his publishing house, Samlaget, Fosse said he saw the prize “as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations.”
The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by their creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma at the award ceremonies in December.
French author Annie Ernaux won the prize in 2022 for what the prize-giving Swedish Academy called “the courage and clinical acuity” of books rooted in her small-town background in the Normandy region of northwest France.
Ernaux was the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel literature laureates.
The literature prize has faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers, as well as too male-dominated.
In 2018, the award was postponed after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, which names the Nobel literature committee and sparked an exodus of members.
The academy revamped itself but faced more criticism for giving the 2019 award to Austria’s Peter Handke, who has been called an apologist for Serbian war crimes.
Comments are closed.