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The coveted Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025 has been bestowed upon the Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, as declared by the Nobel awarding body.

The Academy commended the seventy-one-year-old's "powerful and prophetic oeuvre that, in the midst of end-times terror, reasserts the force of art."

A Renowned Path of Bleak Narratives

Krasznahorkai is known for his dark, melancholic novels, which have earned many accolades, for instance the 2019 National Book Award for literature in translation and the prestigious Man Booker International Prize.

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

Debut Novel

Hailing in Gyula, Hungary in 1954, Krasznahorkai first rose to prominence with his 1985 first book Satantango, a dark and hypnotic representation of a disintegrating village society.

The book would eventually earn the Man Booker International Prize honor in English decades after, in the 2010s.

An Unconventional Writing Approach

Often described as avant-garde, Krasznahorkai is known for his long, winding prose (the dozen sections of his novel each comprise a single paragraph), apocalyptic and pensive motifs, and the kind of persistent force that has led critics to draw parallels with Kafka, Melville, and Gogol.

This work was widely made into a seven-hour movie by filmmaker Béla Tarr, with whom Krasznahorkai has had a lengthy creative partnership.

"The author is a remarkable writer of epic tales in the European tradition that traces back to Franz Kafka to Bernhard, and is characterised by absurdism and grotesque exaggeration," said the committee chair, leader of the Nobel panel.

He characterized Krasznahorkai’s style as having "evolved into … continuous structure with extended, meandering sentences lacking full stops that has become his trademark."

Literary Praise

Sontag has described the author as "today's Hungarian expert of end-times," while WG Sebald commended the broad relevance of his vision.

Just a small number of Krasznahorkai’s works have been rendered in English. The literary critic James Wood once wrote that his books "circulate like valuable artifacts."

International Inspiration

Krasznahorkai’s career has been influenced by travel as much as by language. He first exited the communist Hungary in the late 80s, spending a period in West Berlin for a scholarship, and later found inspiration from Eastern Asia – particularly Mongolia and China – for works such as The Prisoner of Urga, and Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens.

While writing War and War, he explored across Europe and resided temporarily in Allen Ginsberg’s New York apartment, describing the legendary writer's assistance as essential to finishing the work.

Writer's Own Words

Asked how he would describe his oeuvre in an conversation, Krasznahorkai said: "Characters; then from these characters, words; then from these words, some brief phrases; then additional phrases that are longer, and in the primary very long phrases, for the duration of 35 years. Elegance in language. Fun in darkness."

On fans finding his books for the initial encounter, he continued: "For any people who have not yet read my works, I would refrain from advising a particular book to explore to them; on the contrary, I’d recommend them to venture outside, settle at a location, possibly by the edge of a stream, with no tasks, nothing to think about, just being in tranquility like rocks. They will in time encounter someone who has already read my books."

Award Background

Prior to the declaration, bookmakers had ranked the top contenders for this year's honor as Can Xue, an avant garde from China writer, and Krasznahorkai himself.

The Nobel Honor in Literature has been presented on 117 prior instances since 1901. Recent laureates are Ernaux, the musician, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Glück, Handke and Olga Tokarczuk. Last year’s honoree was Han Kang, the South Korean novelist best known for her acclaimed novel.

Krasznahorkai will officially accept the medal and certificate in a function in December in the Swedish capital.

Additional details forthcoming