Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai wins the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature

Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy announced Thursday, honoring him “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

Mats Malm, the Academy’s permanent secretary, said he had reached Krasznahorkai by phone in Frankfurt shortly before the announcement.

Born in 1954 in the southern Hungarian town of Gyula, near the Romanian border, Krasznahorkai is known for his dense, philosophical prose and long, meandering sentences that explore the limits of language and civilization. His debut novel, Satantango, published in 1985, portrayed life in a decaying Hungarian village and was adapted into a seven-hour film by Béla Tarr in 1994.

The Academy’s background material highlighted several of his major works, including The Melancholy of Resistance, War and War, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming, and Herscht 07769. In its analysis, the Nobel committee said his fiction often depicts “the brutal struggle between order and disorder” through surreal imagery and grotesque characters.

Critics have described Krasznahorkai as one of the great modern chroniclers of spiritual desolation. American essayist Susan Sontag once called him “the contemporary master of the apocalypse.” His prose, the committee noted, has evolved toward a fluid, punctuation-free style that has become his signature.

In War and War, the protagonist travels to New York — “the center of the world” — to share a mysterious manuscript discovered in a Hungarian archive. In Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming, a disillusioned aristocrat returns from Argentina to a small town that stages an unwanted celebration in his honor. His later novel Herscht 07769 (2021) intertwines violence and beauty and has been praised for its precise portrayal of social unrest in contemporary Germany.

Krasznahorkai’s fascination with Eastern culture is also reflected in works such as From the North a Mountain, from the South a Lake, from the West Some Roads, from the East a River (2003), set in Kyoto, and Seiobo There Below (2008), a collection of 17 interconnected stories exploring the persistence of beauty and art.

The 71-year-old author will receive a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million) at the traditional Nobel Prize ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.

The week of Nobel announcements continues Friday with the Nobel Peace Prize, followed on Monday with the Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel.

Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)

Featured photo taken in Budapest on March 22, 2017. Credit: MTI / János Marjai