Hungary’s Laszlo Krasznahorkai wins 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature
The 71-year-old was honoured for his visionary works, blending Central European absurdism with Eastern contemplation
Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, the award-giving body said 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 Academy said in a statement.
“But there are more strings to his bow, and he also looks to the East in adopting a more contemplative, finely calibrated tone.”
The second Hungarian to win the prize, awarded by the Swedish Academy, after Imre Kertesz in 2002, Krasznahorkai was born in the small town of Gyula in southeast Hungary, near the Romanian border.
His breakthrough 1985 novel, Satantango, is set in a similarly remote rural area and became a literary sensation in Hungary.
“The novel portrays, in powerfully suggestive terms, a destitute group of residents on an abandoned collective farm in the Hungarian countryside just before the fall of communism,” the Academy said.