Arab Writers React with Praise, Scorn as Nobel in Literature Goes to Norwegian

October 6, 2023

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In the Arab literary world, news of the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse winning the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature drew a mix of responses ranging from praise to curiosity to outright scorn.

The most virulent reaction came from the Iraqi novelist Azher Jirjees, who lives in exile in Norway. He called Fosse a writer of “domestic literature” who “has no position on wars, global violence, or the oppression of peoples” and “stuffs his ears with dough against the screams of the oppressed.”

But others were more enthusiastic. Dar Al Karma, an Egyptian publishing house that has issued Arabic translations of two of Fosse’s novels, praised Fosse as “the new Ibsen,” noting that he has published more than 30 plays, poetry collections and novels, and has been translated into more than 40 languages.

The Swedish Academy, which chooses the Nobel laureates in literature, awarded the prize to the 64-year-old Fosse for his “innovative plays and prose, which give voice to the unsayable.”

From Nynorsk to English and Arabic

The Nobel Prize Committee chairman Anders Olsson called Fosse “a fantastic writer in many ways,” and prize organisers said he could be compared to previous great modernist writers like fellow Norwegian Tarjei Vesaas, as well as Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Georg Trakl, and Franz Kafka.

The Iraqi novelist Azher Jirjees, who lives in exile in Norway, called Fosse a writer of “domestic literature” who “has no position on wars, global violence” and “stuffs his ears with dough against the screams of the oppressed.”

In a statement sent through his Norwegian publisher, Fosse said he was “both really happy and really surprised” to receive the award. “I am overwhelmed, and somewhat frightened. I see this as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature.”

Fosse’s novels, written in Nynorsk, a literary form of Norwegian created in the 19th-century, have been well-known in Europe since the mid-1990s, but only began to appear in English translation a decade later.

Arabic translations came even later. Dar Al Karma issued “Morning and Evening” in 2018 (it was first published in Nynorsk in 2000) and “Trilogy” in 2023 (first published in Nynorsk in 2014). Both works were translated to Arabic by Sherin Abdel Wahab and Amal Rawash.

Adding to the difficulties for translators, Fosse sometimes writes entire works without punctuation, and his language has been described as “heavily pared down to a style that has come to be known as ‘Fosse minimalism’.”

On the Pundits’ Lists

While the Nobel Prize Committee does not disclose the names of nominees for at least 50 years after the nomination has taken place, pundits in the press always speculate on potential contenders.

Names mentioned this year included Tahar Ben Jelloun of Morocco, Ngugi wa Thiong’o of Kenya, Hungarian Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Haruki Murakami of Japan, the French writer Michel Houellebecq, and the Americans Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Joyce Carol Oates. Fosse and his compatriot Karl Ove Knausgaard were also on the lists.

Fosse told the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK: “I have been part of the discussion for 10 years and have more and less tentatively prepared myself that this could happen. But believe me, I didn’t expect to get the prize today.”

Arab Responses to Fosse’s Win

In the Arab world, Akhbar Al-Adab, an Egyptian newspaper devoted to literature, published extensive coverage of the writer in its Friday issue, with a cover bearing his picture under the headline, “Jon Fosse: Nobel Prize 23: Bias towards Brevity.”

The Lebanese critic and poet Nabil Mamlouk said Fosse’s win “opens the door to one problematic question: How is the winner chosen? Are the world’s readers implicitly consulted? To what extent do the award criteria represent the taste and art of reading?”

Dar Al Karma, the Egyptian publishing house, wrote on its Facebook page: “We are honoured to announce that Norwegian writer Jon Fosse has won this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.”

Tarek El-Tayeb, a Sudanese novelist based in Austria, posted about Fosse’s victory that he was happy “to get acquainted with a name worthy of attention.”

In his Facebook post, El-Tayeb quoted an interview in which Fosse said, “I have no desire to be seen as a celebrity, and therefore I live a kind of double life at the present time. Of course I am happy with success, but I don’t necessarily need it.”

Questioning the Selection Process

The Lebanese critic and poet Nabil Mamlouk said Fosse’s win “opens the door to one problematic question: How is the winner chosen? Are the world’s readers implicitly consulted? To what extent do the award criteria represent the taste and art of reading?”

In a column in the Lebanese newspaper “An-Nahar”, Mamlouk also criticised the media frenzy over literary prizes. He wrote: “Perhaps the victory of Jon Fosse, the author of the ‘Trilogy’, whom the New York Times described as having a fierce poetic simplicity, constituted a new blow to the Arab and international newspapers that do not tire of predicting, naming names, or criticising the names that have been proposed (since time immemorial), starting with Adonis, to Milan Kundera, Haruki Murakami, and Amin Maalouf, and of course, Jorge Luis Borges, the Latin poet and condensed prose poem.”

He continued: “It will be difficult for Fosse to explain himself to the world now, specifically to the Arab community that is obsessed with concepts and definitions.”

A Jeer at ‘Domestic Literature’

Azher Jirjees posted his critique of Fosse on Facebook, along with a photo of a statue of Henrik Ibsen. “Good evening, Mr. Ibsen,” Jirjees wrote. “Today a Norwegian playwright named Jon Fosse won. Have you heard of him? A handsome 60-year-old who writes simple, cold literature that does not touch upon constants and values. A peaceful writer who avoids criticising politics, and has nothing to do with the burning of the world around him.”

Of the 120 winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, only 17 have been women. The first was Sweden’s Selma Lagerlöf, in 1909, and the most recent was last year’s laureate, Annie Ernaux of France.

Jirjees, who fled Iraq after an assassination attempt against him in 2005 and now lives permanently in Norway, deals with the struggles of refugees in his own fiction. His first novel, “Sleeping in the Cherry Field”, was long-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2020. His second, “The Stone of Happiness”, was short-listed for the prize this year.

While dismissing Fosse as a writer of “domestic literature”, Jirjees quipped that at least the Norwegian’s win might stop people from buying books by the likes of Knausgaard and others that “annoy adults”. “There is no need for annoying literature, sir,” he concluded. “Long live domestic literature. Long live Nobel, free and proud.”

Nobel’s ‘Eurocentrism’

The “eurocentrism” of the Nobel Prize in Literature has long stirred controversy. In 2009, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Horace Engdahl, declared that “Europe remains the centre of the literary world.”

Novelists and critics have criticised this view. In a 2011 article for The New York Review of Books, the British academic and novelist Tim Parks imagined the unease the mostly Swedish committee members might feel when having to weigh Indonesian poetry against African novels written in French or Afrikaans, each translated to a different language.

Other critics detect a bias toward European and Scandinavian culture, and toward men, in the prize’s statistics. Fosse is the 17th writer of Scandinavian origin to win the prize, out of 120 laureates since the award was established.

Of the 120 winners, only 17 have been women. The first was Sweden’s Selma Lagerlöf, in 1909, and the most recent was last year’s laureate, Annie Ernaux of France.

Only one author writing in Arabic, Naguib Mahfouz, has won the prize (1988). The 2021 laureate, Tanzanian-born Abdulrazak Gurnah, has Arab roots but lives in the United Kingdom and writes in English.

Fosse is only the fourth Norwegian to win the prize, and his victory came nearly a century after the last previous Norwegian winner, Sigrid Undset in 1928. Before this year, the last Scandinavian to win the prize was the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, in 2011.

Fosse has previously won several prestigious literary awards, including Norway’s International Ibsen Award in 2010 and the French-based European Prize for Literature in 2014. He also won one of France’s National Order of Merit awards, and Norway’s highest honour, the Royal Norwegian Order of Saint Olav. In 2011, the Norwegian government granted him the honour of living in Grotten, a house in the precincts of the Royal Palace in Oslo which has been reserved for major artists since the nineteenth century.

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