László Krasznahorkai wins the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature
- Allen & Unwin
- Oct 27
- 3 min read
Learn about winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature László Krasznahorkai.
Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, recognised “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”
The Nobel Committee praised Krasznahorkai as “a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterised by absurdism and grotesque excess. But there are more strings to his bow, and he also looks to the East in adopting a more contemplative, finely calibrated tone.” NobelPrize.org
“Trust — even if there seems to be no reason to.”
In accepting the prize, Krasznahorkai reflected on the role of literature and its endurance through changing times:
“I am deeply glad that I have received the Nobel Prize — above all because this award proves that literature exists in itself, beyond various non-literary expectations, and that it is still being read. And for those who read it, it offers a certain hope that beauty, nobility, and the sublime still exist for their own sake. It may offer hope even to those in whom life itself only barely flickers. Trust — even if there seems to be no reason to.”
His words echo the profound humanism that runs through his novels — works often set amid despair, decay, and the search for meaning, yet suffused with moments of transcendence.
Exploring Krasznahorkai’s Visionary Works
Krasznahorkai’s novels are celebrated for their long, hypnotic sentences, philosophical depth, and unflinching portrayal of both the absurd and the sublime. Below is a selection of his most acclaimed works.
Satantango
Set in a dilapidated Hungarian collective estate, villagers cling to drunken routines until the return of a charismatic outsider (Irimiás) promises deliverance—but the community’s hope collapses into manipulation, betrayal and inertia
The Melancholy of Resistance
In a provincial Hungarian town, a bizarre traveling circus (bringing a stuffed whale and strange spectacle) arrives and unleashes chaotic forces of fear, desire and power on a fragile community, as the veneer of order fractures into something darker.
Wars & War
György Korin, a Hungarian archivist, becomes obsessed with an ancient manuscript and travels to New York to transcribe it obsessively online before his intended suicide, in a novel that blurs mission, madness and the meaning of history.
A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East
A quiet, mythic novella set in Japan, where an enigmatic wanderer (grandson of Genji) traverses a monastery and its surroundings in a journey that fuses ancient ritual, memory and the breakdown of scale and time.
Seiobo There Below
A collection of interconnected stories rooted in Japanese art, myth and landscape, interrogating creation, transcendence and the ways in which the human and the divine brush against each other in moments of wonder and terror.
Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming
A fallen Hungarian aristocrat, Baron Béla Wenckheim, returns to his desolate hometown from exile, triggering in the decaying town a mix of hope, absurdity and latent violence as the locals pin their futures on his supposed redemption.
Herscht 07769
A sweeping, single-sentence novel following a man named Florian Herscht who becomes obsessed with Bach, particle physics and impending apocalypse, writing to the German chancellor while the world around him pulsates with decay and an uncertain future.
László Krasznahorkai was born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954. Over the course of his career, he has written 14 novels and received numerous international honours, including:
National Book Award for Translated Literature (2019) for Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming
Man Booker International Prize (2015) for lifetime achievement
Prix Formentor (2024) for lifetime achievement
Several of his most acclaimed novels — including Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance — were adapted into films by renowned director Béla Tarr, bringing his stark, poetic visions to the screen.
Krasznahorkai’s works have been translated into forty-two languages, and his most recent novel, Herscht 07769, was published in 2024. He lives in the hills of Pilisszentlászló, Hungary.
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