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Norway\u2019s Jon Fosse, whose plays are among the most widely staged of any contemporary playwright in the world, won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Sometimes compared to Samuel Beckett \u2014 another Nobel-winning playwright \u2014 his work is minimalistic, relying on simple language which delivers its message through rhythm, melody and silence.<\/p>\n
The Swedish Academy said the 64-year-old was honoured \u201cfor his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable\u201d.<\/p>\n
Fosse\u2019s writing is defined more by form than content, where what is not said is often more revealing than what is.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am overwhelmed and grateful. I see this as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations,\u201d Fosse said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Norwegian public broadcaster NRK<\/em>, he said he was \u201csurprised but also not\u201d, after his name had been mentioned in Nobel speculation for several years.<\/p>\n The chairman of the Nobel committee, Anders Olsson, told reporters Fosse had come to be regarded as an innovator through his \u201cability to evoke\u2026 loss of orientation, and how this paradoxically can provide access to a deeper experience, close to divinity\u201d.<\/p>\n His major works include \u201cBoathouse\u201d (1989), which was well-received by critics, and \u201cMelancholy\u201d I and II (1995-1996).<\/p>\n Fosse\u2019s oeuvre, written in Norwegian Nynorsk, one of Norway\u2019s written language forms, spans a variety of genres and consists of plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children\u2019s books and translations, the jury noted.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile he is today one of the most widely performed playwrights in the world, he has also become increasingly recognised for his prose,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n Born among the fjords of western Norway, Fosse is usually seen clad in black with a few days\u2019 stubble.<\/p>\n He grew up in a family which followed a strict form of Lutheranism and rebelled by playing in a band and declaring himself an atheist.<\/p>\n He ended up converting to Catholicism in 2013.<\/p>\n After studying literature, he made his debut in 1983 with the novel \u201cRed, Black\u201d which moves back and forth in time and between perspectives.<\/p>\n His latest book, \u201cSeptology\u201d, a semi-autobiographical magnum opus \u2014 seven parts spread across three volumes about a man who meets another version of himself \u2014 runs to 1,250 pages without a single full stop.<\/p>\n The third volume was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. \u201cI knew, I felt, that this kind of writing was made for me,\u201d he once said in an interview with a French theatre website.<\/p>\n He enjoyed the form so much that he wrote the entire play, entitled \u201cSomeone is Going to Come\u201d, which gave him his international breakthrough when it was staged in Paris in 1999.<\/p>\n \u201cEven in this early piece, with its themes of fearful anticipation and crippling jealousy, Fosse\u2019s singularity is fully evident. In his radical reduction of language and dramatic action, he exposes human anxiety and ambivalence at its core,\u201d Olsson said.<\/p>\n Fosse went on to win international acclaim for his next play, \u201cAnd We\u2019ll Never be Parted\u201d, in 1994.<\/p>\n According to his Norwegian publisher, Samlaget, his plays have been staged more than a thousand times around the world.<\/p>\n His work has been translated into around 50 languages.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t write about characters in the traditional sense of the word. I write about humanity,\u201d Fosse told French newspaper Le Monde in 2003.<\/p>\n The Swedish Academy has long been criticised for the over-representation of Western white men authors among its picks.<\/p>\n\u2019Playwriting was \u2018made for me\u2019<\/h2>\n
\nStruggling to make ends meet as an author in the early 1990s, Fosse was asked to write the start of a play.<\/p>\nInternational breakthrough<\/h2>\n