Nightsongs
I don’t know what it is
that always makes something happen
But it must be something
Because something always happens
I don’t want anything to happen
and then something
happens all the same
(Translated by Gregory Motton)
They have a child and life changes. He can’t go out, and she can’t stay in the house. He writes words that no one will publish, and she takes a lover.
In Nightsongs we meet a young couple and heir newborn child. He writes words that no one will publish, becoming more and more isolated from each refusal. She finds the life they lead unbearable. One night she goes out and returns with a new friend. The Royal Court production of Nightsongs was dubbed ‘Waiting for Godot without the gags’.
Jon Fosse
Photo: Agnete Brun
Jon Fosse awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023
Jon Fosse, born in 1959, is widely considered one of the most important writers of our time. For almost forty years he has written novels, plays, poems, stories, essays, and children’s books. His award-winning work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and his plays have been staged over a thousand times all over the world.
Jon Fosse grew up in Strandebarm, a small village in the western part of Norway, he lives today in the Grotten, an honorary residence in Oslo, as well as in Hainburg, Austria, and Frekhaug, Norway.
Fosse’s longest work of prose to date is Septology (2019–21), which he started during a break from playwrighting and after converting to Catholicism in 2013. Fosse has called his method of writing Septology ”slow prose”: a style of shifting levels, scenes, and reflections, the exact opposite of fast-paced drama. Its seven parts have been published in three volumes: The Other Name, I Is Another, and A New Name. It is a suggestive, magnificent narrative about the nature of art and God, about alcoholism, friendship, love, and the passage of time. Septology is translated into over 20 languages and is critically acclaimed worldwide.
For Septology, Jon Fosse has received numerous awards, including the Brage Prize and the Critics’ Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the international Booker Prize and the American National Book Award.
Furthermore, the hiatus in playwriting is over; Fosse is once again writing for the theater. Since 2020, three new plays have premiered. Jon Fosse’s most recent prose work, the novel Kvitleik (A Shining) was released in spring 2023 — a luminous narrative exploring the boundary between life and death.
In 2023, Fosse is also celebrating a literary milestone, marking 40 years since his debut with the novel Raudt, svart (Red, black).
Fosse is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023 and has received numerous prizes, both in Norway and internationally through the years.
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