Nobel Prize in Literature 2023 live: Norwegian Jon Fosse wins award
Norwegian author Jon Fosse is the winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature for his “innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”.
In the words of Swedish industrialist and awards founder Alfred Nobel, the prestigious prize should go “to the person who, in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction”.
And it’s a wrap
We are wrapping up the live-blog on the Nobel Prize in literature.
Here are a few points on what happened today:
The Swedish Academy awarded Jon Fosse with the 2023 Nobel Prize in literature.
The Norwegian author was recognised for his “innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable,” the jury said.
One of his country’s most-performed dramatists, Fosse has written some 40 plays as well as novels, short stories, children’s books, poetry and essays.
This was the fourth Nobel Prize to be awarded this week; on Friday the long-awaited Nobel Prize for peace will be announced.
‘I write about humanity’
Fosse’s work has been translated into about 50 languages.
According to his Norwegian publisher, Samlaget, his plays have been staged more than a thousand times around the world.
“You don’t read my books for the plots,” he told the Financial Times in 2018.
“I don’t write about characters in the traditional sense of the word. I write about humanity,” Fosse told French newspaper Le Monde in 2003.
Playwriting was ‘made for me’
Fosse grew up in a family which followed a strict form of Lutheranism and rebelled by playing in a band and declaring himself an atheist. He ended up converting to Catholicism in 2013.
After studying literature, he made his debut in 1983 with the novel Red, Black which moves back and forth in time and between perspectives.
His latest book, Septology, a semi-autobiographical magnum opus, seven parts spread across three volumes about a man who meets another version of himself, runs to 1,250 pages without a single full stop.
The third volume was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.
Struggling to make ends meet as an author in the early 1990s, Fosse was asked to write the start of a play.
“It was the first time I had ever tried my hand at this kind of work, and it was the biggest surprise of my life as a writer,” he once said in an interview with a French theatre website. “I knew, I felt, that this kind of writing was made for me,” he added.
He enjoyed the form so much he wrote the entire play, entitled Someone is Going to Come.
From poetry to children’s books
More on why the Swedish Academy have chosen Fosse.
“His immense oeuvre written in Norwegian Nynorsk (one of Norway’s written forms of languages) and spanning a variety of genres consists of a wealth of plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations,” the jury said.
“While he is today one of the most widely performed playwrights in the world, he has also become increasingly recognised for his prose.”
The last 10 winners of the Nobel Prize
2023: Jon Fosse (Norway)
2022: Annie Ernaux (France)
2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah (Tanzania, Britain)
2020: Louise Gluck (US)
2019: Peter Handke (Austria)
2018: Olga Tokarczuk (Poland)
2017: Kazuo Ishiguro (Britain)
2016: Bob Dylan (US)
2015: Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus)
2014: Patrick Modiano (France)
‘Another Northern European!’
Adile Aslan, professor of English literature and scholar in residence at Georgetown University in Doha, says the choice of Fosse confirms once again the lack of inclusivity of the Nobel Prize.
“Another Northern European!” Aslan told Al Jazeera.
“Due to political pressures, the Nobel Prize tries to be more inclusive in recent years, but it needs fundamental changes in its makeup in order to bring about real changes that would include the rest of the world where the majority of people live,” Aslan said.
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What was Fosse doing when he heard of his win?
Driving in the countryside.
That’s according to Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the academy, who called Fosse to inform him of the win.
The dramatist promised to drive home carefully.
Fosse is the fourth Norwegian writer to get the Nobel
The previous three were:
Bjornstjerne Bjornson, in 1903
Knut Hamsun, in 1920
Sigrid Undset, in 1928
Source: Al Jazeera