(Emma Loffhagen’s article appeared in the Guardian, 10/9/2025; Photo: ‘Beauty in language. Fun in hell’ … László Krasznahorkai Photograph: Carlos Álvarez/Getty .)
The Hungarian novelist whose books ‘reaffirm the power of art’ was announced as winner at a ceremony in Stockholm
Nobel prize in literature 2025 live: László Krasznahorkai wins ‘for his compelling and visionary oeuvre’
The Nobel prize in literature for 2025 has been awarded to Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, the Swedish Academy has announced.
The Academy cited the 71-year-old’s “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”.
Krasznahorkai is known for his dystopian, melancholic novels, which have won numerous prizes, including the 2019 National Book award for translated literature and the 2015 Man Booker International prize. Several of his works, including his novels Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been adapted into feature films.
“Krasznahorkai richly deserves the prize,” said the novelist Hari Kunzru. “He has a reputation as an austere figure of European high culture, and indeed some of his work is uncompromisingly bleak and difficult, but he’s also a curious, playful and very funny writer. When I read him, I feel fortified, both as a human being and as someone who’s trying to make art. He shows me what’s possible.”
Born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954, Krasznahorkai first made his mark with his 1985 debut novel Satantango, a mesmerising portrayal of a collapsing rural community. The novel would go on to win the Man Booker International prize in English three decades later, in 2015. It was also famously adapted into a seven-hour film by director Béla Tarr, with whom Krasznahorkai has had a long creative partnership.
Often described as postmodern, Krasznahorkai is known for his long, winding sentences (the 12 chapters of Satantango each consist of a single paragraph) and the kind of relentless intensity that has led critics to compare him to Gogol, Melville and Kafka.
