Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai has won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, the award-giving body said on Thursday.
‘The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025 is awarded to the Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art,’ said Mats Malm, permanent secretary at the Swedish Academy.
Krasznahorkai, 71, is just the second Hungarian to win the prize, after Imre Kertesz, who won in 2002 for his semi-autobiographical novel Fatelessness about surviving the Holocaust.
His novels, short stories and essays are best known in Germany – where he lived for long periods – and Hungary, where he is considered by many as the country’s most important living author.
Critically difficult and demanding, his style was described once by Krasznahorkai himself as ‘reality examined to the point of madness’.
His penchant for long sentences and few paragraph breaks have also seen the writer labelled as ‘obsessive’.
Exploring themes of postmodern dystopia and melancholy, his first novel Satantango (1985) brought him to prominence in Hungary and remains his best-known work.
Recounting life in a decaying village in communist-era Hungary, its uncompromising style (12 chapters each consisting of a single paragraph) was called by its translator as ‘a slow lava-flow of narrative’.
The book was for people who ‘want something other than entertainment. who have a preference for the painfully beautiful,’ Krasznahorkai said in a interview.
Last year’s prize was won by South Korean author Han Kang who became the 18th woman – the first was Swedish author Selma Lagerlof in 1909 – and the first South Korean to receive the award.
The Nobel prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy and is worth 11 million crowns ($1.2 million).
Established in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel, the prizes for achievements in literature, science and peace have been awarded since 1901.
Over the years, the choices made by the Swedish Academy have drawn as much ire as applause.
In 2016, the award to American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan sparked criticism that his work was not proper literature.
Prizegivers have also been accused of being snobbish, of having an anti-American bias and of ignoring some of the giants of literature, including Russia’s Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, France’s Emile Zola and Ireland’s James Joyce.