Norwegian novelist and playwright Jon Fosse has won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Fosse, one of Europe’s most celebrated authors, was awarded the prize “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable,” the Swedish Academy announced.
Fosse, a native of the Norwegian city of Haugesund, was educated at the University of Bergen. He made his literary debut in 1983 with the novel Red, Black; dozens more books and plays would follow in the next decades.
Several of Fosse’s novels have been published in English, including Melancholy, translated by Grethe Kvernes and Damion Searls, and a trio of books titled Septology, composed of The Other Name, I Is Another, and A New Name, all translated by Searls. The Other Name was longlisted for the International Booker Prize, and A New Name was a finalist for the International Booker as well as the National Book Award for translated literature and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
Searls told the Guardian, “I first brought Fosse’s fiction into English almost 20 years ago. I read Melancholy in German and immediately felt that the work was brilliant and needed to be translated.”
In a statement, Fosse reacted to his win, saying, “I am overwhelmed, and somewhat frightened. I see this as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
