Nobel prize in literature 2023 won by Norwegian author Jon Fosse – as it happened

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And that’s all for today! Thank you for joining us for the liveblog. You can read the full story by Ella Creamer here.

The Nobel peace prize will be announced tomorrow at 10am BST (11:00 CEST).

Literary critic Catherine Taylor says: “Reading Jon Fosse’s work is a profound experience, deeply spiritual, not to say religious. Fosse has claimed that ‘actually we’re longing for God, because the human being is a continuous prayer’ – and whether that’s true or not, his books are nothing short of miraculous.”

Updated at 07.58 EDT

Jon Fosse’s previous awards

Fosse was already a decorated writer before receiving the Nobel. In 2003 he was made a chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite of France, and he won the Swedish Academy Nordic prize in 2007. In 2010 he, fittingly, won the Ibsen award – he has been called the “new Henrik Ibsen”. He was also given the European prize for literature in 2014.

Updated at 07.57 EDT

In Norway, Fosse is so well-known that there is an International Fosse festival in Oslo, a biennial event that took place for the third time in summer 2023.

He also has an official residence in Oslo, courtesy of Norway’s royal family. “It’s part of the palace. To be absolutely honest, I didn’t really want it. But they convinced me” he told Andrew Dickson in 2014.

Updated at 07.55 EDT

Here’s Catherine Taylor’s review of Fosse’s 2019 The Other Name: Septology I-II, the first instalment of the author’s three-volume septet, featuring not a single full stop throughout.

Updated at 07.56 EDT

Tell us what you think of this year’s winner!

Read more about the “little publisher that could” here:

It’s another win for Fosse’s UK publisher Fitzcarraldo, who now have an astonishing four Nobels. The independent publisher tweeted that it was “utterly thrilled”:

Updated at 08.43 EDT

Read Andrew Dickson’s 2014 interview with Fosse here:

Updated at 08.07 EDT

Who is Jon Fosse?

Born in Haugesund, Norway, in 1959, a serious accident at seven years old has had a big impact on the author’s writing as an adult. He is one of Europe’s most-performed playwrights, and his sparse, Pinteresque dramas have led to him being tipped for the Nobel year after year.

His first novel, Raudt, svart (Red, Black), was published in 1983, although he considers a short story Han (He), published in a student newspaper in 1981, to be his literary debut. His breakthrough as an writer came with the 1989 novel Naustet (Boathouse).

He then went on to write his first play in 1992: Nokon kjem til å kome (Someone Is Going to Come). While this was the first play Fosse wrote, Og aldri skal vi skiljast (And Never Shall We Part) was the first to be performed, at the National Theater in Bergen in 1994.

40 years since he started writing, Fosse has now been recognised by the Nobel committee “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”.

Updated at 07.23 EDT