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

The coveted Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2025 has been granted to Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, as announced by the Nobel awarding body.

The Committee commended the 71-year-old's "gripping and imaginative oeuvre that, within end-times fear, reaffirms the force of the arts."

A Legacy of Bleak Fiction

Krasznahorkai is renowned for his dystopian, melancholic works, which have won numerous prizes, such as the 2019 National Book Award for international writing and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize.

A number of of his works, among them his novels his debut and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been made into movies.

Initial Success

Hailing in Gyula, Hungary in 1954, Krasznahorkai first gained recognition with his 1985 initial work Satantango, a bleak and hypnotic representation of a collapsing village society.

The work would eventually earn the Man Booker International Prize recognition in the English language many years later, in the 2010s.

An Unconventional Prose Technique

Commonly referred to as postmodernist, Krasznahorkai is renowned for his long, winding sentences (the 12 chapters of his novel each comprise a solitary block of text), apocalyptic and melancholic themes, and the kind of unwavering intensity that has led critics to compare him to Gogol, Melville and Kafka.

Satantango was famously made into a lengthy film by cinematic artist the director Béla Tarr, with whom Krasznahorkai has had a enduring creative partnership.

"The author is a significant epic writer in the central European literary tradition that includes Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterised by absurdism and grotesque exaggeration," commented the committee chair, head of the Nobel panel.

He characterized Krasznahorkai’s prose as having "developed towards … smooth structure with lengthy, intricate lines devoid of full stops that has become his trademark."

Critical Acclaim

The critic Susan Sontag has described the author as "the modern Hungarian master of the apocalyptic," while the writer W.G. Sebald applauded the universality of his perspective.

A handful of Krasznahorkai’s books have been published in English translation. The critic James Wood once remarked that his books "circulate like valuable artifacts."

Global Influences

Krasznahorkai’s career has been molded by journeys as much as by language. He first departed from socialist the country in 1987, residing a twelve months in the city for a scholarship, and later was inspired from Eastern Asia – notably Asian nations – for books such as The Prisoner of Urga, and Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens.

While writing War and War, he travelled widely across the continent and resided temporarily in Allen Ginsberg’s New York home, noting the renowned poet's backing as crucial to completing the work.

Author's Perspective

Asked how he would characterize his oeuvre in an discussion, Krasznahorkai said: "Characters; then from these characters, vocabulary; then from these terms, some concise lines; then additional phrases that are longer, and in the main exceptionally extended phrases, for the duration of 35 years. Elegance in prose. Enjoyment in despair."

On readers encountering his writing for the initial encounter, he added: "If there are people who are new to my works, I would refrain from advising a particular book to peruse to them; rather, I’d advise them to go out, rest at a location, perhaps by the edge of a stream, with nothing to do, a clear mind, just remaining in tranquility like boulders. They will in time come across someone who has already read my works."

Literature Prize History

Prior to the declaration, oddsmakers had listed the frontrunners for this year’s honor as Can Xue, an innovative Chinese author, and Krasznahorkai himself.

The Nobel Award in Literary Arts has been presented on over a hundred previous occasions since 1901. Latest recipients are Annie Ernaux, Dylan, the Tanzanian-born writer, Louise Glück, Peter Handke and Tokarczuk. The previous year's winner was Han Kang, the from South Korea writer most famous for The Vegetarian.

Krasznahorkai will officially receive the award and certificate in a function in December in Stockholm.

Additional details forthcoming