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The coveted Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2025 has been bestowed upon the Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, as revealed by the Swedish Academy.

The Committee commended the 71-year-old's "powerful and prophetic oeuvre that, amidst apocalyptic dread, confirms the force of art."

An Esteemed Career of Apocalyptic Writing

Krasznahorkai is known for his dystopian, melancholic books, which have garnered several awards, including the 2019 National Book Award for international writing and the prestigious Man Booker International Prize.

Several of his books, including his novels Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been turned into feature films.

Debut Novel

Originating in the Hungarian town of Gyula in 1954, Krasznahorkai first gained recognition with his 1985 debut novel Satantango, a bleak and captivating depiction of a failing rural community.

The work would go on to earn the Man Booker International Prize recognition in the English language decades after, in the 2010s.

A Distinctive Literary Style

Often described as avant-garde, Krasznahorkai is known for his extended, meandering sentences (the dozen sections of the book each are a single paragraph), apocalyptic and pensive motifs, and the kind of persistent intensity that has led reviewers to liken him to Gogol, Melville and Kafka.

This work was famously made into a seven-hour movie by filmmaker Béla Tarr, with whom Krasznahorkai has had a enduring creative partnership.

"Krasznahorkai is a great epic writer in the central European literary tradition that extends through Franz Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is defined by the absurd and grotesque exaggeration," said Anders Olsson, leader of the Nobel jury.

He portrayed Krasznahorkai’s style as having "progressed to … smooth structure with lengthy, intricate phrases devoid of full stops that has become his signature."

Literary Praise

The critic Susan Sontag has referred to the author as "the contemporary Hungarian master of end-times," while the writer W.G. Sebald applauded the universality of his outlook.

Only a few of Krasznahorkai’s novels have been rendered in English. The reviewer James Wood once noted that his books "get passed around like rare currency."

Worldwide Travels

Krasznahorkai’s career has been influenced by travel as much as by literature. He first departed from socialist Hungary in 1987, residing a period in the city for a fellowship, and later found inspiration from Eastern Asia – particularly China and Mongolia – for novels such as The Prisoner of Urga, and another novel.

While writing this novel, he explored across the continent and stayed in Allen Ginsberg’s New York home, stating the famous poet's assistance as essential to completing the work.

Author's Perspective

Asked how he would describe his oeuvre in an interview, Krasznahorkai answered: "Characters; then from letters, vocabulary; then from these words, some brief phrases; then more sentences that are longer, and in the primary extremely lengthy paragraphs, for the period of 35 years. Elegance in writing. Fun in hell."

On audiences encountering his work for the first time, he added: "Should there be readers who are new to my novels, I would refrain from advising any specific title to read to them; instead, I’d advise them to go out, sit down at a location, possibly by the banks of a creek, with nothing to do, nothing to think about, just staying in silence like stones. They will sooner or later encounter an individual who has encountered my novels."

Literature Prize History

Prior to the declaration, bookmakers had listed the frontrunners for this year’s honor as Can Xue, an experimental Chinese writer, and the Hungarian.

The Nobel Award in Literature has been awarded on over a hundred previous occasions since 1901. Current recipients have included the French author, the musician, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Louise Glück, Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk. Last year’s recipient was the South Korean writer, the from South Korea writer renowned for The Vegetarian.

Krasznahorkai will formally accept the medal and document in a ceremony in the month of December in the Swedish capital.

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