Norwegian Playwright Jon Fosse Wins 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature

Writer Jon Fosse poses in Oslo, Norway December 8, 2015. NTB/Ole Berg-Rusten via REUTERS

Norwegian author and dramatist Jon Fosse won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable," the award-giving body said on Thursday.
The prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1 million).
Born in 1959 in Haugesund on Norway's west coast, Fosse is one of the world's most performed playwrights but his work spans a variety of genres including plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children's books and translations.
His work "touches on the deepest feelings that you have, anxieties, insecurities, questions of life and death," Swedish Academy member Anders Olsson said.
"It has a sort of universal impact of everything that he writes. And it doesn't matter if it is drama, poetry or prose, it the same kind of appeal of basic humanism," Olsson said.
Fosse, seen as a regular contender to win the prize and among this year's favorites in the betting odds, said he was "overwhelmed and somewhat frightened" by the award.
"I see this as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations," Reuters quoted him as saying in a statement.
Fosse is the fourth Norwegian to win the Nobel Prize for literature, but the first since 1928.