Jon Fosse

Jon Fosse.

Jon Fosse is a Norwegian novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet, best known for his novels and plays. He is considered one of the best-known Norwegian writers of contemporary fiction and has been hailed as "the new Ibsen" as his plays are the most widely performed in— and outside—of Norway after Ibsen's own. Despite years of acclaim in Norway and parts of Europe, Fosse's books have only come into wider mainstream acclaim, especially in English, after he was nominated for the 2022 International Man Booker Prize. In 2023, Jon Fosse won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Born Jon Olav Fosse on September 29, 1959, in Haugesund, he grew up on a small farm in Strandebarm in the Hardanger region of Norway. Fosse attended high school in Øystese. He graduated in 1979 and moved to Bergen, where he worked for the newspaper Gula Tidend. That same year, he became a father and married his first wife before attending the University of Bergen through the 1980s, where he studied literature and received an M.A. in comparative literature in 1987.

Jon Fosse also taught at the Academy of Writing in Hordaland, which would end up being remarkable for one of his students—future best-selling Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard. Fosse has also worked as a literary consultant for the retranslation of the Bible into Norwegian and was honored in 2011 by the Norwegian state with an honorary artist's residence for life in Slottsparken in Oslo, known as The Grotto, near the Royal Palace.

Jon Fosse had his first child in 1979, and he married the mother, his first wife, Bjorg Sissel, the following year. Since then, Fosse has been married twice more, to his second wife, Grethe Fatima Syed, before marrying Anna Fosse in 2011. Otherwise, Jon Fosse has lived a fairly private life, preferring to keep his personal life private. Jon Fosse spends his time in three residences, including his honorary artist's residence in Oslo, in Hainburg an der Donau, and in Frekhaug.

Jon Fosse began writing early with him considering his literary debut coming in 1981 when he published the short story "Han" ("He") in a student newspaper. The short story already contained hallmarks of Fosse's writing, including repetition, inner monologues, and a musical, evocative style. Fosse published his debut novel, Raudt, svert (Red, Black), in 1983. The 1980s continued to see Fosse publish poetry, prose, and children's books, including what many consider his breakthrough novel, Naustet (Boathouse), published in 1989. Despite the early success of writing novels, Fosse turned to multi-genre writing, including his prose, poetry, playwriting, essays, and children's books.

Jon Fosse pictured in a theater.

Fosse began writing plays in the 1990s. Prior to this, he had expressed skepticism about the theater; he would later comment he never planned to become a dramatist and initially refused to write plays when asked, only relenting when he needed money. However, he later described writing his first play, Nokon kjem til å komme (Someone Is Going To Come), as the greatest revelation in his writing life. In 1994, Og aldri skal vi skiljast (And Never Shall We Part) was his first play performed, at the National Theater in Bergen.

Fosse began to write plays at a furious pace at this point, appearing across Norwegian stages and at some of the most important of those stages in only a few years. His international breakthrough as a playwright came in 1999, when French director Claude Régy staged Nokon kjem til å komme in Nanterre, outside Paris. The following year, the Berlin theater Shaubuhne, a renowned theater, put on Fosse's play Namnet (The Name) at the Salzburg Festival.

Image from a staging of Jon Fosse.

As his playwriting has gained international renown, Fosse's plays have been performed across the world. Fosse has continued to write plays, writing more than thirty, including Namnet (The Name), Vinter (Winter), Ein sommars dag (A Summer's Day), Draum om hausten (Dream of Autumn), Dødsvariasjonar (Death Variations), Svevn (Sleep), and Eg er vinden (I Am the Wind). Much like his novels, his plays tend to linger in moments of hope and doubt, almost as if the characters are living in purgatory. For example, his play Ein sommars dag (A Summer's Day) follows a woman anticipating the return of her husband from a boat trip; Dødsvariasjonar (Death Variations) is a one-act play following a girl who questions her decision to commit suicide, told in reverse from the time of her death; and Eg er vinden (I Am the Wind), which focuses on two men experiencing an existential crisis while in a fishing boat.

Fosse took a small break from his playwriting in the 2000s and 2010s as he worked on some of his larger novels, and he returned in the 2020s with several plays, including Slik var det (This is How it Was), Sterk vind (Strong Wind), and I svarte skogen inne (In the Black Forest), all of which were performed at the Norwegian Theater, Oslo.

Cover of Jon Fosse's first novel, Raudt, svart.

Fosse's prose novels, despite the near-immediate popularity of his playwriting, have long been considered to have reached a higher literary level, in the opinion of some critics. Those critics have noted that his novels often exhibit a heavily pared-down style, which has come to be known as "Fosse minimalism." Others compare Jon Fosse to German author Hermann Hesse, notably in that both of their works, when summarized, tend to sound terrible, but readers find them powerful and moving when they actually read them. Similarly, his novels show the influence of other writers noted for a minimalism to their writing, including Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Georg Trakl, and Franz Kafka.

English translation title of Jon Fosse's Melancholia I and II.

Despite Fosse's focus on playwrighting through the 1990s, he published some novels, notably Melancholia I in 1995 and Melancholia II in 1996—a two-book fictionalization of the life of nineteenth-century Norwegian painter Lars Hertervig in his descent into madness, which made his artwork appear dreamlike and sublime. Melancholia I details the young artist's obsessions, anxieties, and eventual breakdown; Melancholia II acts as a coda, with different narrative perspectives occurring many years after Hertervig's death.

Then came his 2000 book Margon og kveld (Morning and Evening), a novella that details a man from his birth—as seen from his father's perspective—to that man thinking back on his parents and his life on the day of his death many decades later. Similarly, Det er Ales (Aliss at the Fire), published in 2004, has a similar narrative to his play Eins sommars dag (A Summer's Day), in which a woman relives the day her husband set out on his boat and never returned some twenty years prior to the novel's action.

Edition of Jon Fosse's Trilogien collected in a single edition.

Jon Fosse began writing his Trilogien (Trilogy) toward the end of the 2010s. The Trilogien comprises Andvake (Wakefulness), published in 2007; Olavs Draumar (Olav's Dreams), published in 2012; and Kveldsvævd (Weariness), published in 2014. The saga is a biblical allegory that tells the story of a young couple, Asle and Alida, with the first book showing the couple making their way through Bergen, shrouded in historical fog as they seek to find somewhere for Alida to feed their child. The first book has few clues as to the time it is set or what is happening through Bergen's streets. However, in the second book, the reader discovers the consequences of the action of the first book for the couple and their newborn son. The third book details the remainder of the couple's life and what eventually happened to them through the couple's descendants.

Considered his magnum opus by many, Fosse began writing his seven-volume novel in 2012 at a period of time when he took a break from writing plays, stopped drinking, converted to Roman Catholicism, and married his third wife. The seven-volume series is generally collected into three books: Det andre namnet (The Other Name), first published in 2019; Eg er ein annan (I Is Another), published in 2020; and Eit nytt namn (A New Name), first published in 2021. The novel follows a painter named Asle, an aging artist living in remote southwest Norway and a recent convert to Roman Catholicism; he grapples with time, art, and identity and comes into contact with an alcoholic artist named Asle, a doppelgänger who may or may not exist.

English translations of Jon Fosse's Septology.

Fosse has considered the book an exercise in "slow prose," which is not to say the book reads slowly, but that Fosse believed he gave himself the time and space to let things in to book build appropriately. The novel has been called a frightening and intense read for its themes of existential crisis, memory loss, and concerns around the life lived versus the life that might have been lived in the person of the shadowy other. Further, the novel is written without a sentence break.

The Septology has been translated into over twenty languages and is critically acclaimed worldwide, including being the recipient of the 2021 Brage Prize and the 2021 Norwegian's Critics Prize; was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize and 2022 American National Book Awards; and was longlisted for the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize.

Jon Fosse's children book Kant.

Throughout his writing career, Jon Fosse has written short stories—some of which have been collected and some of which remain uncollected—and has written essays on various subjects. His short stories have followed common themes and approaches that his longer works and plays have. Similarly, he has written children's books, which include Dyrehagen Hardanger (Hardanger Zoo), published in 1993; Kant, published in 2005; and Spelejenta (Play Girl), published in 2009.

Similar to his short story writing, Jon Fosse has written poetry throughout his career, which he calls "Flotsam and jetsam." This is as the author sees the poetry as something that happens to come in the course of the writing process. His poetry evokes the scenery of his childhood on the banks of the Hardangerfjord, a landscape including undulating lines, water and wind, rocks and rain. Further, the poetry includes his repetitive, musical writing style, which works suggestively through simple, elaborated word choices and a repetitive rhythm.

Jon Fosse is remarkable even amongst Norwegian authors for writing in Nynorsk, one of the two official versions of the Norwegian language. He is the fourth Norwegian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, following Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, who won the award in 1903; Knut Hamsun, who won in 1920; and Sigrid Undset, who won in 1928. But Fosse is the first Norwegian winner to write in the Nynorsk language. Nynorsk is used by just 10 percent of the country's roughly 5.4 million people, according to the Language Council of Norway, but is understandable to users of the other written form of Norwegian, Bokmaal.

In Norway, Bokmaal is considered by some to be the language of power, the language of urban population centers, and the language of the press; while Nynorsk, by contrast, is mainly used by people in rural western Norway and is considered a minority language. Fosse winning the Nobel Prize while writing in the less popular language is considered a big moment for Nynorsk. His use of the language, and his contributions to Norwegian culture, were already recognized, with Fosse being granted an honorary residence in 2011 on the grounds of the Royal Palace.