Norwegian Jon Fosse Wins Nobel Prize In Literature

The 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Jon Fosse for "his innovative plays and prose that give voice to the unsayable," as announced by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, reported Christian Edwards and Ed Upright for CNN.

Fosse's body of work includes approximately 40 plays, along with numerous novels, poetry, essays, children's books, and translations. I Photo: Ingvild Festervoll Melien, Faculty of Humanities, Universitetet i Bergen

Fosse, aged 64, was born on the west coast of Norway. His body of work includes approximately 40 plays, along with numerous novels, poetry, essays, children's books, and translations.

The committee commended the author's style, which has become known as "Fosse minimalism," and added, "Fosse presents everyday situations that are instantly recognizable in our own lives.

His radical simplification of language and dramatic action conveys the most powerful human emotions of anxiety and powerlessness in the simplest terms."

His magnum opus, a collection of seven works titled "Septology," tells the story of an aging painter and widower who lives alone while grappling with the realities of religion, identity, art, and family life.

"Septology," spanning approximately 800 pages, has received acclaim for its formal experimentation.

Fosse's meditative prose is seldom interrupted by periods or other forms of punctuation, creating an incantatory flow in his philosophical exploration.

"Fosse combines strong local ties, both linguistic and geographic, with modernist artistic techniques," the committee noted, citing Irish playwright Samuel Beckett and Austrian poet Georg Trakl as influences on his style.

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