When Ben Willows, a 23-year-old actor in London, was working a shift at his day job in Waterstones last September, he read the blurb of Jon Fosse’s The Other Name.
It was so striking that Willows then spent his whole afternoon break – in the cramped staff room with uncomfortable chairs and glaring fluorescent lights – devouring it. “I was absolutely transported,” he says.
The book is the first in the Septology series by the Norwegian author who on Thursday was awarded the Nobel literature prize.
“He manages to say these absolute truths and philosophies in really subtle ways,” Willows says, “and also captures thought. I think that’s what drew me in.
“I was like, yeah, that’s how I think: I careen from one thought to another, which flows into a memory, which cuts to something from years earlier that then brings me back to now.”
On receiving the Nobel award, Fosse said he was “overwhelmed, and somewhat frightened. I see this as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations.”
The Guardian spoke to readers about what they enjoy about Fosse’s work and how it has affected their lives.
‘Reading his plays is like breathing in a new way’
Linda Zachrison, artistic director at Göteborgs Stadsteater, loves how Fosse is “a magician of writing what’s not said”.
“He has his own language,” Zachrison says. “When you read his plays, it’s like breathing in a new way.” In 1999, Zachrison helped bring a theatre production of Fosse’s to Stockholm’s Stadsteater.
Zachrison, 50, says plays like Someone Is Going to Come and The Name have taught her to see and approach the world in new ways. “I remember being very moved and touched, and feeling empathy for all the people that he portrayed – and also feeling empathy for the world around me … and how we’re all struggling.”
Zachrison is drawn to how Fosse’s work explores “how hard it can be just to communicate with each other,” and how language can become “an obstacle instead of a tool for understanding”.
“He’s very existential, in a way. He shows the fragility of being here,” Zachrison says, and the complexities of “how thin the line is between enjoyment or love; irritation or attraction; a wish to reach out or neglect. It’s a simpleness in his writing that opens up an extreme complexity.”
‘Even now, I get a slight shiver’
Fosse’s books in the UK are printed by London-based independent publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions, which has now won three of the past five Nobel literature prizes, with Annie Ernaux (2022) and Olga Tokarczuk (2018).
John Stout, a 69-year-old retired computer science teacher in Greater Manchester, discovered Fosse by chance after taking out a Fitzcarraldo subscription.
He received a copy of Aliss at the Fire, about a woman, Signe, in her old house by a fjord who sees a vision of herself 20 years ago – when her husband failed to return from the water on his rowboat.
“Even now,” Stout says, “I get a slight shiver” thinking about that night on the water and the “sense of impending doom”.
For Stout, it brought up memories of sailing with his father in Scotland as a boy; they sometimes sailed to the Isle of Man, and the children would have to stay quiet during the BBC shipping forecast. “She’s looking back and you get this feeling of these other generations who are there in the house, and are in her thoughts all the time.”
‘He has a deep empathy’
Camilla Bauer, a 51-year-old translator and writer in Stockholm, says that Fosse’s award is particularly poignant amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“He has a deep empathy, he can go down and really analyse where things went wrong – why people become bullies or violent – but there’s always a kind empathy,” Bauer says.
“In these days of war and cynical people killing each other, I think this was very timely. He tackles dark themes, but he shows us where things go wrong and brings hope.”
Bauer first encountered Fosse around 2010, when she went to a day dedicated to his work in Stockholm. She remembers the psychological immediacy of his dramas. As in his plays, “I have been in spaces” where people try to “take away your space, where everything you say is wrong,” leading you to withdraw into yourself – which Fosse captures so well.
‘He has an extraordinary ethereal force’
Alongside novels and poetry, Fosse has written more than 30 plays and is the most-performed Norwegian playwright since Henrik Ibsen.
Chris Lee, a 59-year-old Irish playwright in London, says he is “mesmerised” by Fosse’s work. His ability to mix theatricality and poetry makes his writing “a weird combination of Harold Pinter and Seamus Heaney in a Norwegian fjord”, Lee says. With his plays, there’s a “prayer-like effect” and an “ethereal force” that stays with you.
Lee says that, being a playwright himself, there are “many moments in your life when nothing’s happening, and you feel that maybe nothing will ever happen again”. But Fosse’s writing has been “a great source of confidence” and taught him that “ploughing your own furrow is the best thing to do”.
It’s brilliant for playwrights that Fosse was been awarded the Nobel, Lee adds, so it’s “a time for celebration”.
