Stockholm: Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, known for his darkly comic and philosophically intricate novels that often unfold in a single, unbroken sentence, has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy cited his “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”
The 71-year-old author’s works, marked by a hypnotic prose style and bleak humour, have long drawn comparisons to the Central European literary tradition of Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard. Announcing the prize in Stockholm, Steve Sem-Sandberg of the Nobel committee described Krasznahorkai as “a great epic writer... characterised by absurdism and grotesque excess.”
Sem-Sandberg said Krasznahorkai’s writing “sees through the fragility of the social order” while maintaining “an unwavering belief in the power of art.” He added that the novelist had been on the Academy’s radar “for some time” and hailed his career as “almost half a century of pure excellence.”
Krasznahorkai, who could not immediately be reached for comment and did not appear at the announcement, is the first Hungarian Nobel laureate in literature since Imre Kertész in 2002. He joins a distinguished roster of past winners that includes Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Born in Gyula, a small city in southeastern Hungary near the Romanian border, Krasznahorkai studied law in Szeged and Budapest during the 1970s before devoting himself fully to literature. According to his official biography, he has lived and worked in numerous countries across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
His debut novel, “Satantango”, published in 1985, introduced readers to his distinctive long-form style and was later adapted into a seven-hour film by Hungarian director Béla Tarr. Their collaboration continued with an adaptation of “The Melancholy of Resistance”, another of Krasznahorkai’s major works. The novel, set in a decaying provincial town, is a surreal and unsettling meditation on social collapse.
Other notable books include “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming”, a sprawling narrative centred on a disgraced aristocrat returning to his hometown, and “A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East”, inspired by his travels in China and Japan.
Krasznahorkai has received several major international honours. He was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2015, with judges praising his “extraordinary sentences, sentences of incredible length that go to incredible lengths.” In 2019, he won the U.S. National Book Award for Translated Literature for Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming.
American writer Susan Sontag once called him “the contemporary master of the Apocalypse”, while poet Allen Ginsberg, a close friend, often hosted him during his visits to New York. At home, Krasznahorkai has also been known for his outspoken criticism of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, particularly over Hungary’s stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In an interview with the Yale Review earlier this year, he questioned, “How can a country be neutral when the Russians invade a neighbouring country?”
Despite their political differences, Orbán congratulated the writer in a post on Facebook, calling him “the pride of Hungary, the first Nobel Prize winner from Gyula. Congratulations!”
The Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded 117 times to 121 laureates since 1901, is among the most prestigious honours in the literary world. Last year’s prize went to South Korean author Han Kang for work that the Academy said “confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”