László Krasznahorkai Wins the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature

The world-renowned Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2025 has been granted to the Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, as declared by the Nobel awarding body.

The Committee praised the seventy-one-year-old's "gripping and imaginative oeuvre that, in the midst of cataclysmic terror, reasserts the strength of art."

An Esteemed Career of Dystopian Fiction

Krasznahorkai is celebrated for his dark, somber works, which have won several prizes, including the 2019 National Book Award for international writing and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize.

A number of of his novels, including his fictional works his debut and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been turned into movies.

Debut Novel

Hailing in the Hungarian town of Gyula in 1954, Krasznahorkai first rose to prominence with his 1985 initial work Satantango, a bleak and captivating depiction of a collapsing rural community.

The work would later secure the Man Booker International Prize honor in the English language decades after, in 2013.

An Unconventional Prose Technique

Often described as avant-garde, Krasznahorkai is renowned for his long, winding prose (the twelve chapters of the book each comprise a one paragraph), bleak and pensive themes, and the kind of persistent intensity that has led critics to compare him to literary giants like Kafka.

The novel was famously made into a extended film by filmmaker Béla Tarr, with whom Krasznahorkai has had a lengthy working relationship.

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

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

Literary Praise

The critic Susan Sontag has described the author as "the contemporary Hungarian master of the apocalyptic," while the writer W.G. Sebald praised the wide appeal of his outlook.

Only a few of Krasznahorkai’s works have been rendered in the English language. The critic James Wood once wrote that his books "are shared like valuable artifacts."

International Inspiration

Krasznahorkai’s career has been influenced by journeys as much as by language. He first departed from the communist his homeland in the late 80s, staying a period in Berlin for a scholarship, and later was inspired from Asia – notably Mongolia and China – for works such as a specific work, and Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens.

While writing War and War, he travelled widely across Europe and stayed in the legendary poet's New York apartment, noting the legendary writer's assistance as vital to finalizing the book.

Krasznahorkai on His Work

Inquired how he would describe his work in an conversation, Krasznahorkai answered: "Letters; then from letters, words; then from these words, some short sentences; then further lines that are lengthier, and in the main very long phrases, for the duration of decades. Beauty in prose. Fun in hell."

On fans discovering his books for the first time, he continued: "For any people who haven’t read my novels, I would refrain from advising any specific title to explore to them; rather, I’d recommend them to go out, rest at a location, maybe by the banks of a creek, with nothing to do, a clear mind, just remaining in quiet like rocks. They will sooner or later meet a person who has encountered my novels."

Nobel Prize Context

Ahead of the reveal, betting agencies had listed the favourites for this year’s honor as Can Xue, an innovative Chinese author, and Krasznahorkai himself.

The Nobel Honor in Literature has been given on 117 previous occasions since 1901. Current winners include Ernaux, the musician, Gurnah, the poet, the Austrian and Olga Tokarczuk. The previous year's recipient was the South Korean writer, the Korean author best known for her acclaimed novel.

Krasznahorkai will formally receive the prize medal and document in a event in December in Stockholm, Sweden.

Updates to come