The Swedish Academy has awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature to Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai "for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art."
The recognition crowns a decades-long career for the 71-year-old writer, whose apocalyptic epics and contemplative Eastern-influenced works have established him as a major figure in Central European literature. The prize carries a monetary award of 11 million Swedish kronor, approximately $1.2 million.
A 2019 profile of the author, PW described his books as "echoic dirges that plumb the depths of human consciousness, taking place in downtrodden villages populated by madmen, charlatans, and recluses." It noted his style is marked by long, uninterrupted passages of thought often "rendered in a single sentence that can run on for pages, gathering definition and accruing implication like light passing through a crystal." The same profile compared his work to a variety of authors, including Beckett, Dostoyevsky, and Gogol.
Krasznahorkai's works are published in English translations in the U.S. by New Directions. Over his career, he's won numerous prizes, including the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature for Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize.
In 2013 he won the Best Translated Book Award in Fiction for the translation of his debut novel Satantango, which established his career in Hungary. The book depicts a destitute group of residents on an abandoned collective farm in the Hungarian countryside just before the fall of communism, centering on the sudden appearance of the charismatic trickster Irimiás and his companion Petrina, whom everyone believed dead.
His other books include Seiobo There Below, The World Goes On, The Last Wolf and Herman, and Chasing Homer.
Susan Sontag called Krasznahorkai contemporary literature's "master of the apocalypse," while W.G. Sebald praised his work for its "universality of vision" that "far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing." For his part, Krasznahorkai told PW in 2019, "All artists create a new reality, which we need, but don't deserve."
Beyond publishing books, the author is well-known for his long-running collaboration with revered Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, with whom he adapted Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, along with original screenplays including Damnation, The Man from London, and The Turin Horse.
Despite his ongoing threats of retirement, including in his 2019 PW profile, Krasznahorkai has continued to publish. His most recent major work published in English, Herscht 07769, depicts the life of a man who desperately attempts to warn German chancellor Angela Merkel of a looming apocalypse, while contending with a Bach-obsessed neo-Nazi gang leader in a small town. In its starred review, PW quoted a character in the book as saying that "apocalypse is the natural state of life," and noted that the phrase might stand in as "an artist statement for Krasznahorkai's brilliantly cacophonous novel." The review went on to call it "his best work."
