Discover new books on Goodreads

See if your friends have read any of Jon Fosse's books

Jon Fosse’s Followers (2,136)

Jon Fosse

Born

in Haugesund, Norway

September 29, 1959

Genre

Theatre, Fiction, Poetry

Influences

Samuel Beckett, August Strindberg, Jacques Derrida, Knut Hamsun ...more

edit data

Jon Olav Fosse was born in Haugesund, Norway and currently lives in Bergen. He debuted in 1983 with the novel Raudt, svart (Red, black). His first play, Og aldri skal vi skiljast, was performed and published in 1994. Jon Fosse has written novels, short stories, poetry, children's books, essays and plays. His works have been translated into more than forty languages. He is widely considered as one of the world's greatest contemporary playwrights. Fosse was made a chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite of France in 2007. Fosse also has been ranked number 83 on the list of the Top 100 living geniuses by The Daily Telegraph.

He was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023 "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayabl ...more

Combine Editions
Jon Fosse’s books

Average rating: 3.86 · 86,249 ratings · 13,740 reviews · 258 distinct works • Similar authors

	Morning and Evening by Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Goodreads Author) (Translator) 3.92 avg rating — 15,071 ratings — published 2000 — 73 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Shining by Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Goodreads Author) (Translator) 3.47 avg rating — 15,249 ratings — published 2023 — 46 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Trilogía by Jon Fosse, Cristina Gómez Baggethum (translator), Kirsti Baggethum (translator ) 3.90 avg rating — 11,019 ratings — published 2014 — 52 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Other Name: Septology I-II by Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Goodreads Author) (Translator) 4.04 avg rating — 7,414 ratings — published 2019 — 55 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Aliss at the Fire by Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Goodreads Author) (Translator) 3.69 avg rating — 6,054 ratings — published 2004 — 61 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	I Is Another: Septology III-V by Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Goodreads Author) (Translator) 4.42 avg rating — 3,515 ratings — published 2020 — 43 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Septology 4.46 avg rating — 3,137 ratings — published 2022 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A New Name: Septology VI-VII by Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Goodreads Author) (Translator) 4.50 avg rating — 3,010 ratings — published 2021 — 39 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Vaim by Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Goodreads Author) (Translator) 3.96 avg rating — 3,313 ratings — published 2025 — 36 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Melancholy by Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Goodreads Author) (Translator), Grethe Kvernes (Translator) 3.83 avg rating — 2,126 ratings — published 1995 — 41 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Jon Fosse…

Series by Jon Fosse

Septologien (4 books)
by

Jon Fosse

4.27 avg rating — 18,295 ratings

Trilogien (3 books)
by

Jon Fosse

3.90 avg rating — 13,965 ratings

Vaim (3 books)
by

Jon Fosse

3.97 avg rating — 3,639 ratings

Melancholia (2 books)
by

Jon Fosse

3.84 avg rating — 2,698 ratings

Hundemanuskripta (3 books)
by

Jon Fosse

3.14 avg rating — 653 ratings

More series by Jon Fosse…

Quotes by Jon Fosse (?)

“...because if there was one thing he didn't like it was big words, they just lied and covered things up, those big words, they didn't let what really was live and breathe but just carried it off into something that wanted to be big, that's what he thought...”
― Jon Fosse, Aliss at the Fire

tags: big-words, truth, words

19 likes

“and what the picture is in reality is this spirit, that’s what a picture really is, neither matter nor soul but both parts at the same time and together they make up what I think of as spirit, and maybe that’s why my good paintings, yes, all good paintings, have something to do with what I, what Christians, call The Holy Spirit, because all good art has this spirit, good pictures, good poems, good music, and what makes it good is not the material, not matter, and it’s not the content, the idea, the thought, no, what makes it good is just this unity of matter and form and soul that becomes spirit, that’s what culture is, probably, he says, it’s probably just one person being like another person that creates a culture, for example wearing a suit and tie, while what art is, yes, art is everyone just being like themselves, and totally themselves”
― Jon Fosse, Septology

tags: art, culture, identity, meaning, soul, spirit

15 likes

“...there inside the person is what will pass away and become one with what is invisible in everything...”
― Jon Fosse, The Other Name: Septology I-II

tags: death, dying, god, humanity, spirituality

14 likes

See all Jon Fosse's quotes »

Polls

The best winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Han Kang (2024)

41 votes, 6.0%

Sully Prudhomme (1901)

39 votes, 5.7%

László Krasznahorkai (2025)

25 votes, 3.7%

Gabriel García Márquez (1982)

23 votes, 3.4%

Bob Dylan (2016)

23 votes, 3.4%

Jon Fosse (2023)

20 votes, 2.9%

Albert Camus (1957)

18 votes, 2.6%

Toni Morrison (1993)

18 votes, 2.6%

Annie Ernaux (2022)

18 votes, 2.6%

José Saramago (1998)

17 votes, 2.5%

Kazuo Ishiguro (2017)

16 votes, 2.3%

Olga Tokarczuk (2018)

15 votes, 2.2%

Rudyard Kipling (1907)

14 votes, 2.0%

Thomas Mann (Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family) (1929)

13 votes, 1.9%

Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea) (1954)

13 votes, 1.9%

John Steinbeck (1962)

12 votes, 1.8%

Orhan Pamuk (2006)

11 votes, 1.6%

Samuel Beckett (1969)

10 votes, 1.5%

W.B. Yeats (1923)

9 votes, 1.3%

Seamus Heaney (1995)

9 votes, 1.3%

Louise Glück (2020)

9 votes, 1.3%

Abdulrazak Gurnah (2021)

9 votes, 1.3%

Anne Carson (2026)

9 votes, 1.3%

Theodor Mommsen (A History of Rome) (1902)

8 votes, 1.2%

Henri Bergson (1927)

8 votes, 1.2%

William Faulkner (1949)

8 votes, 1.2%

Jean-Paul Sartre (1964)

8 votes, 1.2%

Elfriede Jelinek (2004)

8 votes, 1.2%

George Bernard Shaw (1925)

7 votes, 1.0%

Hermann Hesse (1946)

7 votes, 1.0%

T.S. Eliot (1948)

7 votes, 1.0%

Bertrand Russell (1950)

7 votes, 1.0%

Naguib Mahfouz (1988)

7 votes, 1.0%

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1903)

6 votes, 0.9%

Rabindranath Tagore (1913)

6 votes, 0.9%

Gao Xingjian (2000)

6 votes, 0.9%

Peter Handke (2019)

6 votes, 0.9%

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905)

5 votes, 0.7%

Selma Lagerlöf (1909)

5 votes, 0.7%

Anatole France (1921)

5 votes, 0.7%

Sigrid Undset (1928)

5 votes, 0.7%

Winston Churchill (1953)

5 votes, 0.7%

Halldór Laxness (1955)

5 votes, 0.7%

Yasunari Kawabata (1968)

5 votes, 0.7%

Patrick White (1973)

5 votes, 0.7%

Mo Yan (2012)

5 votes, 0.7%

Romain Rolland (1915)

4 votes, 0.6%

Odysseas Elytis (1979)

4 votes, 0.6%

Czesław Miłosz (1980)

4 votes, 0.6%

William Golding (1983)

4 votes, 0.6%

Herta Müller (2009)

4 votes, 0.6%

Alice Munro (2013)

4 votes, 0.6%

Svetlana Alexievich (2015)

4 votes, 0.6%

José Echegaray (1904)

3 votes, 0.4%

Paul Heyse (1910)

3 votes, 0.4%

Maurice Maeterlinck (1911)

3 votes, 0.4%

Knut Hamsun (Growth of the Soil) (1920)

3 votes, 0.4%

Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931)

3 votes, 0.4%

Juan Ramón Jiménez (1956)

3 votes, 0.4%

Boris Pasternak (1958)

3 votes, 0.4%

Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967)

3 votes, 0.4%

Eugenio Montale (1975)

3 votes, 0.4%

Saul Bellow (1976)

3 votes, 0.4%

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)

3 votes, 0.4%

Joseph Brodsky (1987)

3 votes, 0.4%

Wisława Szymborska (1996)

3 votes, 0.4%

Günter Grass (1999)

3 votes, 0.4%

Doris Lessing (2007)

3 votes, 0.4%

Mario Vargas Llosa (2010)

3 votes, 0.4%

Patrick Modiano (2014)

3 votes, 0.4%

Giosuè Carducci (1906)

2 votes, 0.3%

Karl Gjellerup (1917)

2 votes, 0.3%

Henrik Pontoppidan (1917)

2 votes, 0.3%

Jacinto Benavente (1922)

2 votes, 0.3%

Władysław Stanisław Reymont (The Peasants) (1924)

2 votes, 0.3%

Sinclair Lewis (1930)

2 votes, 0.3%

John Galsworthy (The Forsyte Saga) (1932)

2 votes, 0.3%

Luigi Pirandello (1934)

2 votes, 0.3%

Pearl S. Buck (1938)

2 votes, 0.3%

Frans Emil Sillanpää (1939)

2 votes, 0.3%

Gabriela Mistral (1945)

2 votes, 0.3%

André Gide (1947)

2 votes, 0.3%

Pär Lagerkvist (1951)

2 votes, 0.3%

François Mauriac (1952)

2 votes, 0.3%

Salvatore Quasimodo (1959)

2 votes, 0.3%

Ivo Andrić (1961)

2 votes, 0.3%

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970)

2 votes, 0.3%

Pablo Neruda (1971)

2 votes, 0.3%

Harry Martinson (1974)

2 votes, 0.3%

Elias Canetti (1981)

2 votes, 0.3%

Jaroslav Seifert (1984)

2 votes, 0.3%

Claude Simon (1985)

2 votes, 0.3%

Camilo José Cela (1989)

2 votes, 0.3%

Octavio Paz (1990)

2 votes, 0.3%

Kenzaburō Ōe (1994)

2 votes, 0.3%

J.M. Coetzee (2003)

2 votes, 0.3%

Frédéric Mistral (1904)

1 vote, 0.1%

Carl Spitteler (Olympian Spring) (1919)

1 vote, 0.1%

Grazia Deledda (1926)

1 vote, 0.1%

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1933)

1 vote, 0.1%

Eugene O'Neill (1936)

1 vote, 0.1%

Roger Martin du Gard (The Thibaults) (1937)

1 vote, 0.1%

Johannes V. Jensen (1944)

1 vote, 0.1%

Saint-John Perse (1960)

1 vote, 0.1%

George Seferis (1963)

1 vote, 0.1%

Nelly Sachs (1966)

1 vote, 0.1%

Eyvind Johnson (1974)

1 vote, 0.1%

Vicente Aleixandre (1977)

1 vote, 0.1%

Wole Soyinka (1986)

1 vote, 0.1%

Derek Walcott (1992)

1 vote, 0.1%

Dario Fo (1997)

1 vote, 0.1%

V.S. Naipaul (2001)

1 vote, 0.1%

Imre Kertész (2002)

1 vote, 0.1%

Tomas Tranströmer (2011)

1 vote, 0.1%

Rudolf Christoph Eucken (1908)

0 votes, 0.0%

Gerhart Hauptmann (1912)

0 votes, 0.0%

Verner von Heidenstam (1916)

0 votes, 0.0%

Mikhail Sholokhov (And Quiet Flows the Don) (1965)

0 votes, 0.0%

S.Y. Agnon (1966)

0 votes, 0.0%

Heinrich Böll (1972)

0 votes, 0.0%

Nadine Gordimer (1991)

0 votes, 0.0%

Harold Pinter (2005)

0 votes, 0.0%

J.M.G. Le Clézio (2008)

0 votes, 0.0%

684 total votes

7 comments

More...

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Knjigom u glavu: Nobel 2014.???	11	130	Oct 09, 2014 08:14AM
Goodreads Italia: En attendant le prix 2015	77	200	Dec 10, 2015 03:00AM
Every one's Choice: * Recent Purchases	660	366	Jun 22, 2016 10:58AM
The Mookse and th...: 2016 Nobel Prize	67	137	Nov 04, 2016 12:02AM
English Translati...: * Norway	52	824	Aug 28, 2017 05:46AM
Türkçede İskandin...: Norveç Edebiyatı	4	369	Nov 27, 2018 07:02AM
The Mookse and th...: Our favourite books of 2019 - nominations and general chat.	60	100	Dec 15, 2019 12:52PM
The Mookse and th...: Our favourite books of 2019 - Dynamic rankings	50	149	Jan 01, 2020 05:38PM

More…

Is this you? Let us know. If not, help out and invite Jon to Goodreads.

Jon Fosse’s Followers (2,136)

Jon Fosse

Combine EditionsJon Fosse’s books

Series by Jon Fosse

Polls

Topics Mentioning This Author

Combine Editions
Jon Fosse’s books