Jon Fosse Awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature

BERKELEY, CA—Jon Fosse has been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.”

“I am overwhelmed and grateful,” said Fosse. “I see this as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations.”

In the words of the Swedish Academy, “His immense oeuvre written in Norwegian Nynorsk and spanning a variety of genres consists of a wealth of plays, novels, poetry collections, es- says, 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.”

Transit Books has published Fosse’s four most recent works, including A New Name, the final volume of his celebrated three-volume Septology, which was a 2022 finalist for a National Book Award, the International Booker Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. On October 31, Transit will publish Septology in paperback along with his latest work, A Shining.

“We’re thrilled for Jon,” said Transit publisher Adam Levy. “This is an incredible recognition of his body of work. We were admirers of his writing before we saw those first few pages
of what would become his Septology, and have been proud to champion his work here in North America since. There’s an ineffable, almost religious quality to the experience of read- ing Fosse’s writing, which can seem simple on the surface but holds a remarkable power.”

Septology follows the lives of two painters—two doppelgängers—grappling with exis- tential questions about death, love, light and shadow, faith and hopelessness. A transcendent exploration of the human condition and braided realities, Septology will appear in a definitive single-volume paperback edition in October 2023.

As New Yorker contributor Merve Emre wrote for the magazine, “Septology is the only novel I have read that has made me believe in the reality of the divine.”

A Shining is a taut, dreamlike novel that illuminates the sublime within the common- place. After driving aimlessly on a frozen late-autumn night, a man finds himself stuck at the end of a forest road. Rather than seeking help, he ventures into the burgeoning darkness of the woods. As he grows ever more lost, cold, and tired, he comes upon a presence he must confront, a glowing being amid the obscurity.