【推荐2】Norwegian author, playwright and poet 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”.

This made him the first Nynorsk writer to receive the prize and the fourth Norwegian to win it, following Sigrid Undset, who won it in 1928. Previous winners of the prize — given for a body of works, rather than a single book-have included Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Bob Dylan.

Born in 1959, Fosse grew up in western Norway, on a small farm in Strandebarm. He started writing poems and stories at age 12, and found writing to be a form of escape. Fosse enrolled at the University of Bergen and studied comparative literature during which time he began writing in Nynorsk, a minority language.

In 1983, Fosse published his first novel Red, Black, kicking off a remarkably prolific (高产的) career. He has published 40 plays, as well as novels, poetry, essays, children’s books and works of translation. Although he started as a poet and novelist, Fosse rose to fame as a playwright. He gained international recognition in the late 1990s with a Paris production of his first play Someone Is Going to Come, which was said to be written in four or five days without revision.

Fosse has long been tipped to receive the Nobel. In 2013, British bookmakers even temporarily suspended betting on the award after numerous bets on his winning, although the prize did not come his way for another decade. When it finally did, the call from the Nobel Prize’s organizers came while Fosse was traveling to Frekhaug, a village on Norway’s west coast. He admitted he was overwhelmed and somewhat frightened.

Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson said, “What is special with him is the closeness in his writing. It touches on the deepest feelings that you have — anxieties, insecurities, questions of life and death — such things that every human being actually encounters from the very beginning. It doesn’t matter if it is drama, poetry or prose — it has the same kind of appeal to this basic humanness.”

【推荐3】Figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu, who won men’s singles Olympic gold medals in 2014 and 2018, said Tuesday he was retiring from competition.

He won the men’s singles gold at the Sochi Games in 2014 and again at the Pyeongchang Games in South Korea in 2018, becoming the first men’s skater to achieve consecutive (连续不断的) golds in the category since Dick Button in 1948 and 1952. At this year’s Winter Games in Beijing, he attempted to become the first man to complete a quadruple axel-4 rotations (旋转) in the air at the Olympics, a jump that he had previously come close to achieving in Japan. In Beijing, he came just short of completing the required rotations for the quadruple axel and fell on his rear, but he expressed satisfaction with his effort afterward and hinted he was ready to retire.

“In terms of how it feels for me, I don’t imagine it being all that different.” he said. “Of course, I feel strongly that I’d like to achieve success with the quadruple axel.”

Beyond his jumping ability, Hanyu’s gift for the dramatics and his gentle appearance made him popular among admirers. Some said he looked as if he had danced off the pages of a Japanese cartoon. They would throw Winnie the Pooh stuffed bears—reportedly his favorite cartoon character—on the ice after his performances. In China, crowds gathered outside the Beijing venue to express devotion to their favorite, and one Chinese follower on social media called Hanyu “the most beautiful icy fairy in my heart”.

In recent years, Hanyu has been suffering from injuries. He said he had constantly thought about retiring from competition since the 2018 Winter Games. “If we’re talking about when I considered turning professional. I was thinking about that at every single competition,” Hanyu said. He said he made the final decision after the Beijing Games as he was recovering from his ankle injury.

【推荐1】Mikah Frye, a 9-year-old boy, was walking down the streets with his grandmother discussing Christmas gifts when he saw some homeless people struggling to stay warm in the cold night. Then he was thinking about a way to help the homeless to spend a warm Christmas.

That thought stayed in Mikah Frye’s mind and when he reached home, Mikah informed his parents not to buy the Microsoft XBox gaming device he had asked for earlier. Mikah realized that by not buying the $300 device, he could instead donate over 30 blankets to the homeless. He knew how much it meant to be warm in the cold holiday season.

Three years ago, Mikah and his parents were the ones living in a homeless shelter. Having suffered a financial crisis, they too had lost their house, not knowing where their next meal would come from and sharing a blanket every night. Mikah was six years old then but he remembered what it was like to have to give back that precious blanket every morning.

Reaching out to the emergency shelter programme that looked after them 3 years ago, the family donated 60 blankets in the end, each with a personalized message of hope in Mikah’s handwriting stating: “They gave me a blanket, but I had to leave it. That’s why I want you to have your own blanket. Today, I live in my own house, and someday you will too. Your friend, Mikah.”

The homeless people at the shelter may not have been able to give Mikah a Christmas gift in return but his gesture was noted by the billion dollar company Microsoft who made sure that Mikah was fooled into visiting their store so that Santa Claus could personally deliver an XBox from the company to him as a reward for making the top of “Santa’s list of nice boys” that year.

【推荐2】Twenty-five years ago on July 1, 1997, I woke up very late in my apartment in Singapore. I jumped out of bed in a little bit of panic. I woke up my 8-year-old daughter Avy, who was not exactly in a hurry to get out of bed. “We’re late for school,” I half-yelled at her. I finally got her into the shower, dressed her hurriedly and made it to the nearby bus stop in time. Thankfully, the school was only two stops away. We got in, rubbing our eyes as the sunlight streamed into the bus.

Her mom had flown to Hong Kong several days earlier on assignment for a newspaper to cover the handover of the city’s return to China.

I had taken off from work for a week to help look after our daughter. I would pick up my daughter from school around midday. At the end of the day, I would watch the news on TV, which would lead the entire week with the historic events happening in Hong Kong. I would wonder where my wife was in the crowd that was gathered to witness the handover.

The year, 1997, was tense because the Asian financial crisis began. The Thai baht(泰铢) was hit, followed by the South Korean won(韩元) and, like a contagious virus which spreads rapidly, the financial system seized up. For that week though, that was the least of my worries. I just made sure we did not have a repeat of July 1, when we were nearly late for school. My wife was very busy during the handover, chasing down stories in Hong Kong as the British flag was lowered for the last time.

I later spent a few years working in Hong Kong, but my enduring memory of the days surrounding its return to China was the time I spent as a babysitter, although it is kind of hard to call an 8-year-old a baby. The whole thing was a lifetime ago. But it is a good memory.