A Silent Language: The Nobel Lecture

The essential lecture delivered by the 2023 Nobel Laureate in Literature, published for the first time in a collectible edition.

＂If there’s any metaphor I would use for the act of writing, it would have to be listening,＂ says Jon Fosse in A Silent Language, the lecture he delivered after being awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. When he writes, Fosse explains, he listens for texts that exist somewhere outside of himself in order to transcribe them before they disappear. With reverence and humility, Fosse traces his relationship to writing and celebrates the capacity of language to embrace the mystery, complexity, and existential uncertainty of the human experience. ＂It is only in the silence that you can hear God’s voice,＂ he says, offering a key to his beloved works of drama and fiction. ＂Maybe.＂

Jon Fosse is one of Norway’s most celebrated authors and playwrights. He was born in 1959 on the west coast of Norway and is the recipient of countless prestigious prizes, both in his native Norway and abroad. Since his 1983 fiction debut, Red, Black, Fosse has written prose, poetry, essays, short stories, children’s books, and over forty plays, with more than a thousand productions performed and translations into fifty languages. A New Name--the third and final volume of Septology--was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the International Booker Prize. In 2023, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature ＂for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.＂