The 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature was on Thursday awarded to Norwegian writer Jon Fosse for his innovative plays and prose that “give voice to the unsayable”.

The prestigious award, bestowed by 18 judges who make up the Swedish Academy, honors a writer’s entire body of work and is worth about Rs 8.2 crore.

Fosse’s large body of work spans genres ranging from plays, novels, poetry collections, to essays, translations and children’s books.

His work A New Name: Septology VI-VII – described by the Swedish Academy as Fosse’s “magnum opus” – was a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2022.

The academy said that the 64-year-old is one of the world’s most performed playwrights. He presents everyday situations that are instantly recognisable in our own lives, they added.

“His radical reduction of language and dramatic action expresses the most powerful human emotions of anxiety and powerlessness in the simplest terms,” the jury said.

Fosse said that winning the Nobel Prize in Literature is both overwhelming and scary, the BBC reported.

In 2022, French writer Annie Ernaux won the prize for the “courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”.

This year, Nobel winners in physics, medicine and chemistry were announced earlier this week.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded on Friday and the Nobel Prize in Economics will be announced on October 9. The prizes will be handed out to the winners on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.