(CNN Spanish) –– Norwegian writer, playwright and poet Jon Fos wins the Nobel Prize in Literature 2023. The Academy always surprises us, without any bets. Experts set their sights on new languages, powerful structures, and sublime and original ways of telling stories.
This fall was no exception. The Academy confirms that it grants this award to the author “for his innovative theatrical and prose works that give voice to what cannot be said.” When reading Fosse’s works you will find a very original writing system. The author uses only commas, never periods, creating a harmonious swing that takes us back to the waves that wash the Norwegian coasts.
His passion for Lorca, his devotion to Beckett and Ibsen, and frequent poetic translation, are his legendary legacy that led him to build his own voice on very firm foundations. The music, an echo of his adolescence, runs over the dialogues and breathing is an important part of the silence that defies the drama.
Great literature is that magic vehicle, a conceptual potion that, once you read the first line, transports you to various states, drawing surprising plots, climaxes, and dialogues that move from the author’s imagination to yours. The 64-year-old writer is a native of… Haugesunda well-known figure in his country, holds the most important awards granted by the Kingdom of Norway to its authors, and has a house called Groten in the gardens of the Royal Palace in Oslo.
His plays have been widely acclaimed and performed around the world, and his brilliant prose has a following that has actually read him all over the world. 40 languages. His novel Rojo, Negro (1983) surprised international readers and critics upon its release. Published by De Conatos Publishing House in Spanish Highly recommended four-volume ‘Septology’ translations: ‘Another Name I’, ‘Another Name II’, ‘Another I’ and ‘A New Name’.
Why read it? According to the Academy: “The human condition is a central theme of Foss’s work, regardless of genre.” In my opinion, this book tells of a rural Norway at the height of the great European theatre, delving into frozen regions, perhaps dormant in the human imagination, doing justice to the deep history of a country geographically fragmented by islands, but united in the greatness of the struggle for life, a dramatic discourse that takes poetry as its guide. Just as García Márquez constructed his own Macondo, Foss reveals to us a recognizable imagination of isolation, his texts are a cry born of the fjords of western Norway, and reading Foss is to translate and make recognizable the endemic literary maps embedded in the world’s thaw. Emotions.
The arrival of the Nobel Prize at the doors of the Frankfurt Fair certainly changes trends every year, washes the face of libraries, and encourages us to read in one language or another. It invites us to learn about and delve into other cultures thanks to the way in which the Swedish Academy, after comprehensive analysis, recognizes the work of an author, a culture, a country and a continent and circulates it on a global level.
The call of dawn is enough to establish a new literary canon. And at that precise moment all the sirens sound and the race against time begins for journalists, agents, editors, booksellers, specialists and festival directors in all languages.
What is the Nobel Prize for? Discovering the author in his work as a whole and in its historical and cultural context. This award makes you a celebrity, but it does not guarantee the importance of the work. While composer and singer Bob Dylan and English politician Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize in Literature for their contributions to Letters in Various Arrangements, great pillars of world literature such as Franz Kafka, Leon Tolstoy, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Juan Rulfo. They died without being recognized by the Swedish Academy.
The award ensures the consolidation and recognition of the literary treasures that humanity distills decade after decade. Some are obvious, others are well-kept secrets.
The importance of John Foss’s work is assured beyond awards. The playful and poetic values of his work, the innovations in literary language and the sensual translation of an interior country unknown to millions of readers, are undoubtedly his passport to future generations. All we have to do is listen to his voice, not the voice of his characters, as he delivers in his native language, under the snowy Swedish winter, his acceptance speech for the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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