Hungary's Laszlo Krasznahorkai wins Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025

Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, the award-giving body said on Thursday, “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”.

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“Laszlo 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,” the Academy said in a statement.

“But there are more strings to his bow, and he also looks to the East in adopting a more contemplative, finely calibrated tone.”

The second Hungarian to win the prize, awarded by the Swedish Academy, after Imre Kertesz in 2002, Krasznahorkai was born in the small town of Gyula in southeast Hungary, near the Romanian border.

His breakthrough 1985 novel, Satantango, is set in a similarly remote rural area and became a literary sensation in Hungary.

“I'm very happy, I'm calm and very nervous altogether,” the author told Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Radio, “It is my first day as a Nobel prize winner,” he said.

“The novel portrays, in powerfully suggestive terms, a destitute group of residents on an abandoned collective farm in the Hungarian countryside just before the fall of communism,” the Academy said.

Krasznahorkai had a close creative partnership with Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr. Several of his works have been adapted into films by Tarr, including “Satantango” and “The Werckmeister Harmonies”.