Jon Fosse wins Nobel literature prize

The Nobel Prize in literature was awarded on Thursday to the Norwegian novelist and playwright Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”.

Fosse’s work has long been lauded throughout continental Europe, but he has recently found a growing audience in the English-speaking world. By receiving what is widely seen as the most prestigious prize in literature, he joins a list of laureates including Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro and French writer Annie Ernaux, who last year was awarded the Nobel for books that plumb her personal passions and tragedies.

Critics have long compared Fosse’s sparse plays to the work of two previous Nobel laureates: Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett. And he had long been tipped to win. In 2013, British bookmakers temporarily suspended betting on the prize after a flurry of bets on Fosse’s winning. In…