Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai wins 2025 Nobel prize in literature

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, the Swedish Academy announced.

Krasznahorkai received the award “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

Literary critic James Wood has noted that with only a few of his works translated into English, Krasznahorkai’s books “get passed around like rare currency.” The Nobel Committee highlighted a body of work “characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess” that has earned widespread acclaim.

Born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954, just two years before the Hungarian Revolution and its brutal suppression by the Soviet Union, Krasznahorkai has reflected on his upbringing, saying he grew up “in a predicament and a country where a person accursed with a heightened aesthetic and moral sensitivity like me simply cannot survive.”

Dubbed by the late American essayist Susan Sontag as the “contemporary master of the apocalypse,” Krasznahorkai’s novels often depict Central European villages where townsfolk search for meaning in a godless world. His works, including Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, are known for dense, philosophical prose exploring chaos, decay, and moral struggle, and have inspired acclaimed film adaptations.