STOCKHOLM — Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, whose work tackles birth, death, faith and the other “elemental stuff” of life in spare Nordic prose, won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday for writing that prize organizers said gives “voice to the unsayable.”
The novelist and playwright said the prize was recognition of “literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations” — an ethos expressed in dozens of enigmatic plays, stories and novels, including a seven-book epic made up of a single sentence.
Fosse’s work, rooted in his Norwegian background, “focuses on human insecurity and anxiety,” Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel literature committee, told The Associated Press. “The basic choices you make in life, very elemental stuff.”
One of his country’s most-performed dramatists, Fosse said he had “cautiously prepared” himself for a decade to receive the news that he had won.
“I was surprised when they called, yet at the same time not,” the 64-year-old told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK. “It was a great joy for me to get the phone call.”
The author of 40 plays as well as novels, short stories, children’s books, poetry and essays, Fosse was honored “for his innovative plays and prose, which give voice to the unsayable,” according to the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize.
Fosse has cited the bleak, enigmatic work of Irish writer Samuel Beckett — the 1969 Nobel literature laureate — as an influence on his sparse, minimalist style.
Edmund Austigard, executive officer of Fosse’s publisher, Samlaget, said the author described his work as “slow writing and reading literature.”
“It’s not a type of literature that you bring to the beach and read in an hour or two,” he said. “It’s a type of literature … that invites you into a unique world and invites you to stay there for a while.”
While Fosse is the fourth Norwegian writer to get the literature prize, he is the first in nearly a century and the first who writes in Nynorsk, one of the two official written versions of the Norwegian language. It is used by just 10% of the country’s 5.4 million people, according to the Language Council of Norway.