Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse wins Nobel Literature Prize

The Swedish Academy has awarded the Nobel Literature Prize to Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse, whose plays are among the most widely staged of any contemporary playwright in Europe.

He was honoured "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable," the Swedish Academy said on Thursday.

Last year, French author Annie Ernaux won the prize for what the prize-giving Swedish Academy called “the courage and clinical acuity” of books rooted in her small-town background in the Normandy region of northwest France.

Ernaux was just the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel literature laureates. The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers.

In 2018, the award was postponed after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, which named the Nobel Literature Committee, and sparked an exodus of members.

The academy revamped itself but faced more criticism for giving the 2019 award to Austria’s Peter Handke, who has been called an apologist for Serbian war crimes.

Other prizes

On Wednesday, the chemistry prize was awarded to Moungi Bawendi of MIT, Louis Brus of Columbia University, and Alexei Ekimov of Nanocrystals Technology Inc.

They were honoured for their work with tiny particles called quantum dots — tiny particles that can release very bright-coloured light and whose applications in everyday life include electronics and medical imaging.

Earlier this week, Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against Covid-19.

On Tuesday, the physics prize went to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz for producing the first split-second glimpse into the super-fast world of spinning electrons.

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences ends the awards season on Monday.

The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of $1 million from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.

Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma when they collect their Nobel Prizes at the award ceremonies in December.