In 1958, Soviet writer Boris Pasternak was awarded the prize for his novel Doctor Zhivago, which had been published in Italy the previous year but not at home. His award angered the Soviet authorities so much (the state-controlled media called it an "artistically squalid, malicious work") that he was forced to turn it down.

In 1964, French writer Jean-Paul Sartre refused the prize. Archives opened in 2015 revealed that he had written a letter informing the Swedish Academy of his intention to decline the prize, were it to be offered to him, but the letter arrived after the jury had already made its decision.

He later said he didn’t want to accept as he had always refused all official honours in the past.

We've said earlier that Fosse writes in Nynorsk - one of Norway's two versions of the Norwegian language.

This is what it means.

Modern Norwegian consists of two written forms: Nynorsk, literally the new Norwegian, and Bokmål, the book language.

Until 1814, Danish was the standard written language used in Norway. After Norway declared its independence from Denmark, the name of the Danish language in Norway became a hot topic of debate throughout the 19th century.

It was during that time that Nynorsk was formulated by Ivar Aasen - a botanist and self-taught linguist, who travelled around the country to collect words and examples of grammar from different dialects in different regions. Eventually, Nynorsk was born and is now used mainly in the west of the country, and by roughly by 10% of the population.

Bokmål developed from Danish-Norwegian which was the elite language after the union of Denmark and Norway in the 16th and 17th centuries and is much more commonly used in Norway today. According to some estimates, it is the written standard of 85-90% of Norwegians.

Here's a look at some of the previous winners of the literature prize.

• 2017 Kazuo Ishiguro

The Japanese-born British writer was praised by the Swedish Academy as someone "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".

His most famous novels The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go were adapted into highly acclaimed films.

In a curious twist, when contacted by the BBC for a comment, Ishiguro admitted he hadn't heard from the Nobel committee and wasn't sure whether it was a hoax - you can watch the moment the BBC called the author here.

Image source, Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

• 2016 Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan became the first songwriter to win the award. He received the prize "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". Dylan at first failed to acknowledge his prize, with a member of the Swedish Academy calling him “impolite and arrogant”.

The artist took his stage name from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and had long been tipped as a potential prize recipient. Few experts, though, expected the academy to give the award to a genre such as folk or rock music. One BBC writer said the decision “elevates song lyrics to being on a critical par with literature, poetry and playwriting”.

• 2015 Svetlana Alexievich

Announcing the Belorussian writer as the winner of the award, then-Swedish Academy chair, Sara Danius, called her writing“ a monument of courage and suffering in our time”.

The best-known works of Alexievich in English translation include Voices from Chernobyl, an oral history of the 1986 nuclear catastrophe, and Zinky Boys, a collection of first-hand accounts from the Soviet-Afghan war. The title refers to the zinc coffins in which the dead came home.

Image source, Agnete Brun

So, there we have it, Jon Fosse has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

He is known, and revered, for his revelatory use of form, simple language and silence.

"What's not being said is more important than what's being said," he told French paper Le Monde in 2023 - inviting comparisons to playwright Henrik Ibsen, a master of the unsaid.

The AFP news agency reports that Fosse was born in 1959 on the west coast of Norway to a family which followed a strict form of Lutheranism.

The author is said to have rebelled by playing in a band and declaring himself an atheist. At 64 years old, he converted to Catholicism.

He made his literary debut in 1983 with the novel Red, Black. Other major works including Boathouse (1989), Melancholy I and II (1995-1996) and his latest book, Septology were to follow.

Fosse was married three times and fathered six children. He gave up alcohol after being treated in hospital for alcohol poisoning.

After a 10-year hiatus, he returned with a new piece for the theatre entitled Sterk Vind (Strong Wind).

Charlotte Gallagher
BBC Culture reporter

Jon Fosse began writing stories as a child, with his breakthrough novel, Boathouse, published in 1989.

Having established himself as a novelist, poet and children's author - he then turned his attention to plays.

Namnet - which was first staged in 1995 - remains one of his most performed works.

It tells a claustrophobic story about a pregnant woman returning to her family home with the reluctant father-to-be in tow.

His sparse, Pinteresque style brought him to international attention, though commercial success has eluded him in the UK.

Fosse was nominated for the Booker Prize, won the Ibsen Prize and was awarded the French Order of Merit in 2007.

He has said he is "overwhelmed and somewhat frightened" at becoming a Nobel Laureate.

His latest book, "Septology", a semi-autobiographical magnum opus – is in seven parts spread across three volumes. It runs to 1,250 pages. Without a single full stop.

Image source, Getty Images

Jon Fosse is the first Norwegian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature since 1928.

Sigrid Undset won the award then "principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages".

Undset wrote novels, short stories, and essays.

In her earlier years she wrote about strong, contemporary women struggling for emancipation before later focusing on the Middle Ages.

Her best known work is Kristin Lavransdatter, which deals with themes of honour, religious faith, and the common life shared by women and men in 15th-century Norway.

"With solid historical knowledge, deep psychological insight, a vivid imagination, and a vigorous language, Undset brings to life both communities and individuals," the Nobel Prize website says., external

She later fled Nazi-occupied Norway to the US where she continued to write about her war-torn country.

Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson has been talking about Fosse's work and how his first play - 'Someone Is Going to Come' (Nokon kjem til å komme) - (his international breakthrough in 1998) - reflected the writer's distinctiveness.

Jon Fosse says he is "overwhelmed and somewhat frightened" at getting the prestigious award.

Image source, EPA

Alan Davey, former controller of BBC Radio 3, wrote a blog in 2020 when the station presented a new production of one his works, I Am The Wind.

"Writing in Nynorsk, a spare form of Norwegian with a relatively small number of words, his characters live in abstract, poetic worlds characterised by cold, harsh internal and external reality.

"Like the Icelandic sagas the characters speak little, and description of external surroundings is spare."

Davey added: "Characters begin sentences and don’t finish, dialogue ebbs and flows like inconclusive waves as fears of revealing inner feelings make characters hold back.

"It's not like the kind of narrative theatre that is popular in this country, and passions are laid bare by what is not said as much as what is said. It is poetry and abstract music rather than prose that gets the plot done."

Norwegian Jon Fosse, one of the world’s most performed playwrights - he is already laden with international awards.

The Swedish Academy in Stockholm praised his innovative plays and prose and said he gave voice to the unsayable. His works have been translated into numerous languages around the world.

Do stick with us as we have just a few minutes to go before we learn who has won this year's Nobel Prize in Literature.

You can watch the ceremony coming live from Stockholm at the top of this page.