Norwegian author Jon Fosse has been awarded The 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” "This year’s literature laureate Jon Fosse writes novels heavily pared down to a style that has come to be known as ‘Fosse minimalism’," the award-giving body underscored in a social media post.
"This can be seen in his second novel ‘Stengd gitar’ (1985), when Fosse presents us with a harrowing variation on one of his major themes, the critical moment of irresolution. A young mother leaves her flat to throw rubbish down the chute but locks herself out, with her baby still inside. Needing to go and seek help, she is unable to do so since she cannot abandon her child. While she finds herself, in Kafkaesque terms, ‘before the law’, the difference is clear: Fosse presents everyday situations that are instantly recognisable from our own lives," the Nobel Prize described the novel for which the renowned author has been awarded.
Who is Jon Fosse?
Describing about Fosse the award-giving body stressed that the author has much in common with his great precursor in Norwegian Nynorsk literature Tarjei Vesaas. According to The Nobel Prize, Fosse combines strong local ties, both linguistic and geographic, with modernist artistic techniques. He includes in his Wahlverwandschaften such names as Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard and Georg Trakl.
While Fosse shares the negative outlook of his predecessors, his particular gnostic vision cannot be said to result in a nihilistic contempt of the world. Indeed, there is great warmth and humour in his work, and a naïve vulnerability to his stark images of human experience.
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