The Hungarian Author László Krasznahorkai Awarded the 2025 Nobel Award in Literature

The prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature for this year has been granted to from Hungary author László Krasznahorkai, as announced by the committee.

The Jury commended the author's "compelling and visionary body of work that, in the midst of cataclysmic dread, reaffirms the force of art."

A Legacy of Dystopian Writing

Krasznahorkai is renowned for his bleak, somber novels, which have garnered several accolades, including the recent National Book Award for literature in translation and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize.

A number of of his books, among them his titles his debut and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been turned into feature films.

Initial Success

Hailing in a Hungarian locale in the mid-1950s, Krasznahorkai first made his mark with his 1985 debut novel Satantango, a grim and captivating portrayal of a disintegrating rural community.

The novel would go on to earn the Man Booker International Prize honor in the English language nearly three decades later, in 2013.

A Unique Literary Style

Commonly referred to as postmodern, Krasznahorkai is known for his lengthy, intricate prose (the dozen sections of Satantango each consist of a solitary block of text), apocalyptic and pensive themes, and the kind of persistent force that has led literary experts to draw parallels with Gogol, Melville and Kafka.

Satantango was famously transformed into a seven-hour film by director Béla Tarr, with whom Krasznahorkai has had a enduring artistic collaboration.

"He is a remarkable writer of epic tales in the central European literary tradition that extends through Kafka to Bernhard, and is marked by the absurd and grotesque excess," commented Anders Olsson, leader of the Nobel panel.

He portrayed Krasznahorkai’s prose as having "evolved into … continuous syntax with extended, meandering sentences devoid of full stops that has become his trademark."

Literary Praise

Sontag has described the author as "the modern from Hungary genius of end-times," while the writer W.G. Sebald praised the broad relevance of his vision.

Just a small number of Krasznahorkai’s novels have been translated into English translation. The reviewer James Wood once noted that his books "get passed around like valuable artifacts."

International Inspiration

Krasznahorkai’s professional journey has been influenced by travel as much as by literature. He first departed from the communist Hungary in 1987, staying a period in West Berlin for a fellowship, and later was inspired from Asia – particularly Mongolia and China – for works such as a specific work, and Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens.

While working on this novel, he travelled widely across European nations and stayed in Allen Ginsberg’s New York home, noting the famous writer's assistance as vital to completing the novel.

Krasznahorkai on His Work

Inquired how he would explain his work in an interview, Krasznahorkai said: "Characters; then from these characters, vocabulary; then from these words, some brief phrases; then additional phrases that are more extended, and in the primary extremely lengthy sentences, for the span of 35 years. Elegance in writing. Fun in darkness."

On readers encountering his work for the initial encounter, he added: "If there are individuals who haven’t read my books, I would refrain from advising any specific title to read to them; rather, I’d suggest them to venture outside, settle somewhere, perhaps by the side of a brook, with no obligations, a clear mind, just being in tranquility like rocks. They will in time meet a person who has already read my novels."

Literature Prize History

Before the announcement, oddsmakers had listed the favourites for this year’s prize as Can Xue, an experimental Chinese novelist, and the Hungarian.

The Nobel Honor in Literary Arts has been given on 117 prior instances since 1901. Latest winners have included Annie Ernaux, Dylan, the Tanzanian-born writer, Louise Glück, the Austrian and the Polish author. Last year’s winner was the South Korean writer, the South Korean novelist best known for The Vegetarian.

Krasznahorkai will ceremonially accept the medal and diploma in a function in the month of December in Stockholm, Sweden.

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