Jon Fosse, a master of spare Nordic writing in a sprawling body of work ranging from plays to novels and children’s books, won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for works that “give voice to the unsayable.”

Fosse’s work, which is rooted in his Norwegian background, “focuses on human insecurity and anxiety," Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel literature committee, told The Associated Press. "The basic choices you make in life, very elemental stuff.”

One of his country’s most-performed dramatists, Fosse said he had “cautiously prepared” himself for a decade to receive the news that he had won.

“I was surprised when they called, yet at the same time not," Fosse, 64, told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK. "It was a great joy for me to get the phone call.”

The author of 40 plays as well as novels, short stories, children’s books, poetry and essays, Fosse was honoured “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable,” according to the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize.

Fosse has cited the bleak, enigmatic work of Irish writer Samuel Beckett – the 1969 Nobel literature laureate – as an influence on his minimalist style.

His first novel, “Red, Black,” was published in 1983, and his debut play, “Someone is Going to Come,” in 1992. His major prose works include “Melancholy;” “Morning and Evening,” whose two parts depict a birth and a death; “Wakefulness;” and “Olav’s Dreams.”

His plays, which have been staged across Europe and in the United States, include “The Name,” “Dream of Autumn” and “I am the Wind.” His work “A New Name: Septology VI-VII”, described by Olsson as Fosse’s “magnum opus”, was a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2022.

Fosse has also taught writing – one of his students was best-selling Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard – and consulted on a Norwegian translation of the Bible.

Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the academy, reached Fosse by telephone to inform him of the win. He said the writer was driving in the countryside and promised to drive home carefully.

Fosse is the fourth Norwegian writer to get the literature prize, but the first in nearly a century. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson got it in 1903, Knut Hamsun was awarded it in 1920 and Sigrid Undset in 1928.

Fosse writes in Nynorsk, one of the two official written standards of Norwegian that is chiefly spoken in and around Bergen, where the writer lives. It is used by just 10 percent of Norway's 5.4 million people, according to the Language Council of Norway, but completely intelligible with the other written form, Bokmaal.

Guy Puzey, senior lecturer in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, said Bokmaal is “the language of power, it’s the language or urban centres, of the press,” while Nynorsk is used mainly by people in rural western Norway.

“So it’s a really big day for a minority language,” he said. (AP)