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Awarded for «the dramaturgy and innovative prose that give voice to what cannot be said». The Norwegian writer Jon Fosse won the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature for «his immense work written in New Norwegian, which embraces a variety of genres – continues the Swedish Academy in the motivation – and is made up of a vast range of works plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations. Although he is one of the most performed playwrights in the world today, he has also become increasingly recognized for his prose.”
In 2003 Fosse was appointed Knight of the National Order of Merit of France and in 2015 he had already received the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize, reserved for the best authors of Scandinavian origin.
Also journalist and literary consultant
A full-time writer, Fosse has also worked as a journalist, literary consultant and teacher at the Writing Arts Academy of Hordaland. News which, for once, does not shock the bookmakers, because just the day before they had announced him among the possible winners together to the Chinese writer Can Xue, the Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and the Australian Gerard Murnane. After the French Annie Ernaux triumphed last year, in 2023 the Academy will play at home: born in 1959 in Haugesund, a town overlooking the North Sea, raised on a small farm in Strandebarm, Fosse has lived since 2011 in the honorary residence of Grotten, in Oslo, granted to him by the King for his literary merits. He spends part of his time in Austria, with his second wife, of Slovakian origin. Marked by a serious accident that occurred at the age of seven, Jon Fosse enrolled at the University of Bergen, where he specialized in comparative studies.
His debut novel, Raudt, Svart (Red, Black), dates back to 1983; already here we find the peculiar elements of his poetics: hypnotic repetitions, interior monologues and a highly musical, suggestive style. After the publication of poems and children’s books, in 1989 there was an important turning point with the novel Naustet (Boathouse), germinally aimed at the visionary nature of more mature production. The first play dates back to 1992, Og aldri skal vi skiljast (And we will never be separated), staged in 1994. From this moment on – with a rhythm of writing that was nothing short of furious – Fosse became known internationally thanks to his plays, performed throughout Europe. In Italy Il Teatro (edited by Rodolfo Di Giammarco) was published by Editoria & Spettacolo in 2006. Then comes Melancholia in 2009 (translation and afterword by Cristina Falcinella, Fandango), a diptych of monologues dedicated to the painter Lars Hertervig and the light that illuminates his canvases. Very suggestive – and witnesses of Fosse’s polygraphic impulse – are the Gnostic Essays (edited by Franco Perrelli, Cue Press 2018), in which the intimacy, mysticism and theological depth of the Norwegian author who in 2012 emerged converted to Catholicism. And again, Morning and Evening, a vigorous novella, punctuated by a calcareous and languishing language, which earns him the qualification of “heir of Ibsen and Beckett” (New York Times). But the magnum opus is the world-novel structured in seven books, Septology, a text at least as imposing as Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. The release of the third part, I am another, is scheduled for October 10th, «an all-round reflection on love, art and friendship», written in an enchanting and lyrical prose. The first two volumes of Septology were published in 2021, by La nave di Teseo, with the title The other name: yet another thoughtful questioning on existence and death, on desperation and faith.