Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2025 “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”
Krasznahorkai is a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterised by absurdism and grotesque excess.
Krasznahorkai was born in 1954 in the small town of Gyula in southeast Hungary, near the Romanian border. A similar remote rural area is the scene of his first novel, 'Satantango', published in 1985, which was a literary sensation in Hungary and his breakthrough work.
His 'Herscht 07769' has been described as a great contemporary German novel, on account of its accuracy in portraying the country's social unrest.
The prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy and is worth 11 million crowns ($1.2 million).
Last year's prize was won by South Korean author Han Kang for her body of work that the committee said “confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
The literature prize was the fourth to be announced this week, following the 2025 Nobels in medicine, physics and chemistry.
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