Jon Fosse: Norwegian author and playwright wins Nobel Literature Prize

Norwegian author and playwright Jon Fosse has been named the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Swedish Academy said on Thursday it was for his "innovative plays and prose which gives voice to the unsayable".

As well as the prize, Fosse receives 11 million Swedish kronor (£822,000).

There was no public shortlist for the award, but Salman Rushdie, Can Xue, Margaret Atwood and Haruki Murakami were among the other possible contenders.

Previous winners of the prize - given for a body of work, rather than a book - have included Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Bob Dylan.

The Nobel prizes, awarded since 1901, recognise achievement in literature, science, peace and latterly economics.

The literature prize is awarded to "the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction", according to the 1895 will of Swedish businessman and philanthropist Alfred Nobel.