The Nobel judges said the 71-year-old author, whose novels sometimes consist of just one long sentence, is \u201ca great epic writer\u201d whose work \u201cis characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s the first Nobel literature winner from Hungary since Imre Kertesz in 2002 and joins a list of laureates that includes Ernest Hemingway<\/a>, Toni Morrison<\/a> and Kazuo Ishiguro<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Books by Hungarian author L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Krasznahorkai at B\u00f6rshuset in Stockholm, after he was announced as the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature at the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institutet, in Stockholm, Sweden, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. (Henrik Montgomery\/TT News Agency via AP)<\/p>\n Books by Hungarian author L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Krasznahorkai at B\u00f6rshuset in Stockholm, after he was announced as the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature at the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institutet, in Stockholm, Sweden, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. (Henrik Montgomery\/TT News Agency via AP)<\/p>\n Read More<\/p>\n \u201cI am calm and very nervous,\u201d Krasznahorkai told Radio Sweden after getting news of the prize, which comes with an award of more than $1 million. \u201cThis is the first day in my life when I got a Nobel Prize. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n The work that won the Nobel Prize in literature<\/p>\n The American writer and critic Susan Sontag once described Krasznahorkai as the \u201ccontemporary master of the Apocalypse.\u201d His work has echoes of other European writers who explored the absurd tragicomedy of existence, including Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett. <\/p>\n Zsuzsanna Varga, a Hungarian literature expert at the University of Glasgow, said Krasznahorkai\u2019s novels probe the \u201cutter hopelessness\u201d of human existence, while also being \u201cincredibly funny.\u201d <\/p>\n Krasznahorkai\u2019s near-endless sentences made his work the \u201cHotel California\u201d of literature \u2014 once readers get into it, \u201cyou can never leave,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Varga suggested readers new to Krasznahorkai\u2019s work start with \u201cSatantango,\u201d his 1985 debut, which centered around the few remaining residents of a dying collective farm and set the tone for what was to follow.<\/p>\n Krasznahorkai has since written more than 20 books, including \u201cThe Melancholy of Resistance,\u201d a surreal, disturbing tale involving a traveling circus and a stuffed whale, and \u201cBaron Wenckheim\u2019s Homecoming,\u201d the sprawling saga of a gambling-addicted aristocrat.<\/p>\n \u201cHerscht 07769,\u201d from 2021, is set in a German town riven with unrest. Written as a series of letters to then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, it has just one period in its 400 pages.<\/p>\n Several works, including \u201cSatantango,\u201d and \u201cThe Melancholy of Resistance\u201d were turned into films by Hungarian director B\u00e9la Tarr.<\/p>\n Krasznahorkai also wrote several books inspired by his travels to China and Japan, including \u201cA Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East,\u201d published in Hungarian in 2003.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Permanent Secretary and Speaker of the Swedish Academy Mats Malm announces Laszlo Krasznahorkai as the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, at the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institutet, in Stockholm, Sweden, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. (Henrik Montgomery\/TT News Agency via AP)<\/p>\n Permanent Secretary and Speaker of the Swedish Academy Mats Malm announces Laszlo Krasznahorkai as the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, at the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institutet, in Stockholm, Sweden, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. (Henrik Montgomery\/TT News Agency via AP)<\/p>\n Read More<\/p>\n How Krasznahorkai came to win<\/p>\n Krasznahorkai had been on the Nobel radar for some time, committee member Steve Sem-Sandberg said, calling his literary output \u201calmost half a century of pure excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n The writer was born in the southeastern Hungarian city of Gyula, near the border with Romania, and studied law at universities in Szeged and Budapest before shifting his focus to literature. <\/p>\n Varga, the academic, said Krasznahorkai developed a cult following among young Hungarians during the twilight of Communism in the 1980s, when \u201cauthors were pretty much like pop stars.\u201d<\/p>\n J\u00e1nos Szeg\u0151, Krasznahorkai\u2019s editor at the Budapest-based Magvet\u0151 publishing house, said that the author\u2019s works deal with \u201clife on the periphery,\u201d and are interested in \u201cthe techniques of power.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAll the populist tendencies of our time can also be found in his novels \u2014 from barbarism to the manipulation of the masses,\u201d Szeg\u0151 said.<\/p>\n Krasznahorkai has been a critic of autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n<\/a>, especially his government\u2019s lack of support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion.<\/p>\n In an interview with Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet earlier this year, Krasznahorkai expressed criticism both of Orb\u00e1n\u2019s political system and the nationalism present in Hungarian society.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hungary\u2019s Laszlo Krasznahorkai poses for photographers in London, Tuesday, May 19, 2015. (AP Photo\/Matt Dunham, File)<\/p>\n Hungary\u2019s Laszlo Krasznahorkai poses for photographers in London, Tuesday, May 19, 2015. (AP Photo\/Matt Dunham, File)<\/p>\n Read More<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no hope left in Hungary today and it is not only because of the Orb\u00e1n regime,\u201d he told the paper. \u201cThe problem is not only political, but also social.\u201d<\/p>\n Orb\u00e1n nonetheless congratulated the writer in a Facebook post, saying: \u201cThe pride of Hungary, the first Nobel Prize winner from Gyula, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Krasznahorkai.\u201d<\/p>\n How Krasznahorkai and others reacted<\/p>\n Krasznahorkai received the 2015 Man Booker International Prize for his body of work and the National Book Award for Translated Literature in the U.S. in 2019 for \u201cBaron Wenckheim\u2019s Homecoming.\u201d<\/p>\n He said none of his career was planned.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted at first to write only one book. And I didn\u2019t want to be a writer,\u201d he told Swedish radio, but rereading his first novel he discovered it wasn\u2019t perfect.<\/p>\n \u201cI started to write another one because I wanted to correct \u2018Satantango,\u2019\u201d he said, and later \u201cI tried to write a new book to correct the first two. … My life is a permanent correction.\u201d<\/p>\n The literature prize has been awarded by the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy 117 times to a total of 121 winners. Last year\u2019s winner was South Korean author Han Kang<\/a>. The 2023 winner was Norwegian writer Jon Fosse,<\/a> whose work includes a seven-book epic made up of a single sentence.<\/p>\n The literature prize is the fourth to be announced this week, following the 2025 Nobels in medicine<\/a>, physics<\/a> and chemistry<\/a>.<\/p>\n The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday. The final Nobel, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, will be announced Monday.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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