JON FOSSE a Norwegian playwright, author, and poet, has received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature during a ceremony held in Stockholm.
Since releasing his first fiction work, Raudt, Svart [Red, Black], in 1983, Fosse has authored more than forty theatre plays that have been translated into more than fifty languages, as well as prose, poetry, essays, short tales, and children’s books.
Fosse is the first Norwegian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature following novelist Sigrid Undset ninety-five years ago. Typically, Prize Laureates are awarded for the author’s life work.
After Henrik Ibsen (who did not win the award) the founder of realism, Fosse is reportedly the most performed dramatist in Norway.
His recent A New Name: Septology VI-VII, which American writer Damion Searls translated into English, was included on the 2022 Booker Prize shortlist.
Fosse, 64, is not a challenging writer, according to Anders Olsson, the head of the Nobel Committee for Literature. He writes about universal feelings like death, separation, and the fragile nature of love and he used the most basic of language.
Main image credit: Gu Bra (CC); Author photo, credit: Tom A. Kolstad Det norske samlaget (CC)
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When an infant washes up on the south coast of England, what does an elderly man do with the foundling? When a young, unmarried woman barges into his life, how does he handle her blarney? The young woman and the baby’s intrusion throws his strict everyday routine symmetry into disarray. The elderly man starts to feel disoriented in a world he no longer understands and that seems to be made up of irate individuals who are unable to disguise their prejudices. Meanwhile, he has a baby to care for… why won’t society help him find this child’s parents?
Max Writivity Club 