In 2012, the Norwegian novelist and playwright collapsed. He gave up drinking, retreating from the public eye – then, earlier this month, he got a call from the Swedish academy. He discusses how it feels to win a Nobel prize
On the day this year’s Nobel prize in literature was announced, Jon Fosse went for a drive in the countryside outside Bergen to relax. “I was nervous before the announcement,” says the Norwegian playwright and author, with a laugh. He has been a fixture on bookies’ lists of Nobel favourites since 2013, so he felt, “you know, ‘It could be me.’ But I didn’t think it would be me.”
At 20 minutes to one, a call came through from Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, and “I felt a sudden happiness entering my body and my brain.” Then, perhaps unsurprisingly for a man whose plays and novels are filled with uncertainty – about everything from the nature of God to where his characters might be located in time or space – he began to doubt what he was hearing. “If you don’t believe it,” Malm said, “just watch me at one o’clock on television.”
