László Krasznahorkai wins Nobel Prize in literature
AWARDS
10 OCTOBER 2025
- Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, whose philosophical, bleakly funny novels often unfold in single sentences, won the Nobel Prize in literature for his “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”.
- The Nobel judges praised his “artistic gaze which is entirely free of illusion, and which sees through the fragility of the social order combined with his unwavering belief in the power of art characterised by absurdism and grotesque excess.
- Several works, including his debut, Satantango, and The Melancholy of Resistance were turned into films by Hungarian director Béla Tarr.
- Satantango revolves around a group of destitute residents of a collective farm on the eve of the fall of communism, waiting for a miracle, which needless to say would not happen.
- Mr. Krasznahorkai has been a vocal critic of autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, especially his government’s lack of support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion.
- The Booker judges praised his “extraordinary sentences, sentences of incredible length that go to incredible lengths, their tone switching from solemn to madcap to quizzicSal to desolate as they go their wayward way.”
- Often compared to greats such as Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Herman Melville, his dystopian, absurd and melancholic stories mirror life in Hungary under oppression and beyond in the pre and post-fall of the Iron Curtain era, with a chilling resonance to contemporary times.
