Nightsongs

Jon Fosse The Nobel Prize

Original title: Natta syng sine songar
Publisher: Samlaget, 1998
Genre: Play

In Nightsongs, we meet a young couple and their new-born child. He writes words that no one will publish, becoming more and more isolated with each rejection. 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 reviewed as “Waiting for Godot without the gags”

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)

Foreign rights

Albania: Logbook
Bosnia: Dobra Kniga
Chinese (simplified): Horizon Media
Czechia: The Theatre Institute Prague
France: L’Arche Editeur
Germany
Iran
Poland: Agencja Dramatu i Teatru
Serbia: IPC Media
Sweden: Faethon
UK: Oberon

“Painfully absorbing.”

Financial Times

Jon Fosse

Photo: Agnete Brun

Nobel Prize-winner Jon Fosse (b. 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 now lives in the Grotten, an honorary residence in Oslo, as well as in Hainburg, Austria, and Frekhaug, Norway.

Fosse was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023 and has received numerous prizes, both in Norway and internationally through the years.