Nobel Prize

• Author Jon Fosse Fosse was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday.
• In 2013, the 64-year-old converted to Catholicism.
• His work has been translated into around 50 different languages.

Jon Fosse Fosse, an author, essayist, poet, and children’s author best known as a dramatist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday.

His theatrical works are not generally known, although they are among the most often produced by any contemporary playwright in Europe. Fosse, who was born in the fjords of western Norway, is generally seen dressed in black with a few days’ stubble. He was raised in a household that practised strong Lutheranism, and he rebelled by joining a band and declaring himself an atheist. In 2013, the 64-year-old converted to Catholicism.

He made his debut in 1983 with the novel Red, Black, which swings back and forth in time and between perspectives after studying literature. His notable works are the critically acclaimed Boathouse (1989) and Melancholy I and II (1995-1996). Septology, a semi-autobiographical magnum opus consisting of seven sections split across three volumes about a man who encounters another version of himself, is 1,250 pages long and has no full stops.

Trilogy, Wakefulness, and A Shining are among his other works. The third book was nominated for the International Booker Prize in 2022.

In the early 1990s, while struggling to make ends meet as a playwright, Fosse was requested to write the beginning of a play. “It was the first time I had attempted this type of work, and it was the biggest surprise of my writing career.” “I knew, I felt, that this kind of writing was made for me,” he once told a French theatrical website.

Jon Fosse was so taken with the form that he composed the complete play, titled Someone is Going to Come. In 1994, he received international praise for his next play, And We’ll Never Be Parted. His work has been translated into around 50 different languages.

His plays have been presented more than 1,000 times throughout the world, according to his Norwegian publisher Samlaget. Fosse’s work is minimalist in nature, depending on basic words to convey its meaning through rhythm, melody, and quiet. His characters seldom speak. And what they say is frequently repetitious, with little but major differences between repetitions. The phrases are maintained suspended, hanging in the air, and are often punctuated.

“You don’t read my books for the plots,” he said in 2018. “I don’t write about characters in the conventional sense. In 2003, Fosse told the French newspaper Le Monde, “I write about humanity.”

The father-of-six, who has been married three times, gave quit drinking a few years ago after being hospitalized for alcohol poisoning. After a decade-long hiatus in which he claimed playwriting offered him no joy, he returned with a new piece for the theatre called Sterk Vind (Strong Wind, which has yet to be translated into English).

Despite the fact that his plays are notoriously difficult to perform, Fosse was named 83rd on the Daily Telegraph’s list of the top 100 geniuses living in 2007.

Jon Fosse has unavoidably been compared to Norway’s national playwright Henrik Ibsen, and in 2010 earned the International Ibsen Award, one of the theatrical world’s most coveted accolades, in a country where authors are hardly recognized overseas unless they write crime novels.

But perhaps Samuel Beckett is a better analogy. Fosse has expressed his appreciation for the Irish icon, calling him as “a painter for the theatre rather than an actual author” like himself.

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