The 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded this Thursday, October 5 to Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse for “his innovative plays”, announced the jury.
The Swedish Academy honored the 64-year-old writer “for his innovative plays and prose that gave voice to the unspeakable.” “I am overwhelmed and grateful. I consider this to be an award for literature that aims above all to be literature, without any other consideration,” reacted Jon Fosse in a press release.
A jack-of-all-trades writer
Novelist, essayist, poet, author of children’s books and above all playwright, Fosse is not easily accessible to the general public. However, he is perhaps the living author whose plays are the most performed in Europe.
He is a child of the fjords born 64 years ago on the west coast of Norway. A region beaten by natural elements and of which it has kept the language, “new Norwegian” (nynorsk). He grew up in a pietist-inspired environment with a Quaker grandfather, both a pacifist and a leftist. A pietism from which the young Fosse distanced himself, preferring to call himself an atheist and play guitar in a group, Rocking Chair, before finally embracing the Catholic faith late in life, in 2013.
After literary studies, he made his debut in 1983 with “Rouge, Noir”, a novel where a young man settles scores with pietism. The style, marked by numerous projections over time and alternating points of view, will become his trademark.
Followed, among others, “The Boathouse” (1989), which won him critical esteem, and “Melancholia” I and II (1995-96), another major work.
His latest masterstroke, “Septologian” – seven chapters divided into three volumes – exploits a man’s encounter with another version of himself to raise existential questions with, as always, parsimonious and unpredictable punctuation.