THE Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Norwegian author Jon Fosse for “his innovative plays and prose, which give voice to the unsayable,” according to the Swedish Academy. One of his country’s most-performed dramatists, Fosse, 64, has written some 40 plays as well as novels, short stories, children’s books, poetry and essays.

Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the academy, announced the prize on Thursday in Stockholm. The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by their creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma at the award ceremonies in December.

 

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, as well as too male-dominated.