John AdoyiThe Swedish academy in Stockholm, has awarded a Norwegian author and playwright, John Fosse, the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.”
The Nobel Prize for Literature according to the will of Alfred Nobel should go to “to the person who, in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction.”
Announcing the Prize on Thursday, the Nobel committee said: “His immense oeuvre, written in Norwegian Nynorsk and spanning a variety of genres consists of a wealth of plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations. While he is today one of the most widely performed playwrights in the world, he has also become increasingly recognised for his prose.”
The committee added that “Fosse presents everyday situations that are instantly recognizable in our own lives. His radical reduction of language and dramatic action expresses the most powerful human emotions of anxiety and powerlessness in the simplest terms.”
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Fosse, 64 is the 4th Norwegian to win the Prize and the first Norwegian in the 21st century to be awarded. Sigrid Undset in 1928 was the last Norwegian literature Laureate.
Mr. Fosse will receive a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) together with a Gold medal and a diploma in December.
As per his publisher, Fosse’s literary creations have been rendered into over 40 languages, and his plays have seen more than 1,000 unique productions.
Starting in 2011, Fosse took up residence at the Grotto, an esteemed abode situated within Oslo’s royal palace grounds—a place that has accommodated several prominent Norwegian authors and composers over the past century.
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Since the inception of the award in 1901, 120 persons have been awarded and only 17 have been women with French author Annie Ernaux, the winner in 2022, the 17th woman “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”
Only six African writers have been awarded. Wole Soyinka, in 1986, was the first African, followed by Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt, 1988), Nadine Gordimer (South Africa, 1991), John Coetzee (South Africa, 2003), Doris Lessing (Zimbabwe, 2007) and Abdulrazak Gurnah (Tanzania, 2021).
The award announcement continues on Friday with the Prize for Peace.
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