STOCKHOLM, Oct. 9, 2025 (Chatnewstv.com) — Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, known for his long, labyrinthine sentences and bleakly humorous vision of human existence, won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday for what the Swedish Academy called his “compelling and visionary oeuvre.”
The 71-year-old author, whose philosophical novels blur the line between chaos and clarity, became Hungary’s first Nobel literature laureate since Imre Kertész in 2002. His celebrated works — including “Satantango” and “The Melancholy of Resistance” — were adapted into acclaimed films by Hungarian director Béla Tarr.
Krasznahorkai told Radio Sweden he was “calm and very nervous” upon hearing the news.
“This is the first day in my life when I got a Nobel Prize,” he said. “I don’t know what’s coming in the future.”
The Swedish Academy praised Krasznahorkai as “a great epic writer” whose novels are marked by “absurdism and grotesque excess.” His sprawling, single-sentence narratives have earned him comparisons to Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, while American writer Susan Sontag once described him as the “contemporary master of the apocalypse.”
Zsuzsanna Varga, a Hungarian literature expert at the University of Glasgow, said Krasznahorkai’s work captures both “the utter hopelessness of existence” and an “incredible, dark humor.” She likened his long, winding prose to “Hotel California — once you enter, you can never leave.”
Born in the southeastern Hungarian city of Gyula, near the Romanian border, Krasznahorkai studied law before turning to literature. His 1985 debut novel “Satantango” — about the decaying remnants of a collective farm — set the tone for his career-long exploration of despair, decay, and absurdity.
He has since published more than 20 books, including “The Melancholy of Resistance”, a surreal allegory involving a traveling circus and a stuffed whale, and “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming”, a sprawling narrative about a disgraced aristocrat returning home. His 2021 novel “Herscht 07769” — written as a series of letters to Angela Merkel — reportedly contains only one period across 400 pages.
Committee member Steve Sem-Sandberg said Krasznahorkai’s Nobel recognition comes after “almost half a century of pure excellence.”
Krasznahorkai has been an outspoken critic of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, often condemning nationalism and authoritarianism in his homeland. In a recent interview with Svenska Dagbladet, he said, “There is no hope left in Hungary today … The problem is not only political, but also social.”
Orbán nonetheless congratulated him in a Facebook post, calling him “the pride of Hungary.” Krasznahorkai later responded on X, writing, “I thank Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for his congratulations. But I will always oppose his political actions and ideas. I remain a free writer.”
The author previously won the Man Booker International Prize in 2015 and the U.S. National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2019.
“I wanted to write only one book,” he once said. “Then I read it again and found it imperfect. I wrote another to correct it — and then another to correct them both. My life is a permanent correction.”
The Nobel literature award, worth 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), is the fourth announced this week, following prizes in medicine, physics, and chemistry. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday, and the Economics Prize on Monday.
The Nobel ceremonies will take place on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.
