Hungarian Writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai Wins 2025 Nobel Literature Prize

By Adedapo Adesanya

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

“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 Swedish Academy said on Thursday.

He becomes the second Hungarian to win the prize, after Imre Kertesz in 2002.

Mr Krasznahorkai was born in the small town of Gyula in southeast Hungary, near the Romanian border.

“Satantango”, his 1985 breakthrough, is set in a similarly remote rural area and became a literary sensation in Hungary.

Other works that have been translated into English include: The Bill, Seiobo There Below, Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens, The Last Wolf and Herman, and The Manhattan Project : A Literary Diary Presented as Twelve Chance Encounters or Coincidences / alongside a photographic essay by Ornan Rotem.

Others are The World Goes On, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming, Spadework for a Palace : Entering the Madness of Others, Chasing Homer : Good Luck, and Nothing Else : Odysseus’s Cave / with art by Max Neumann ; with music by Szilveszter Miklós, and A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East, Herscht 07769 : A Novel.

Mr Krasznahorkai also looks to the East in adopting a more contemplative, finely calibrated tone. The result is a string of works inspired by the deep-seated impressions left by his journeys to China and Japan.