Hungarian Writer László Krasznahorkai Wins 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature

Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai has won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy announced, “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art,” Reuters reported.

Krasznahorkai is the second Hungarian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Photo: Miklós Déri)

“László Krasznahorkai is a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess,” the Academy said in its statement.

“But there are more strings to his bow—he also looks to the East, adopting a more contemplative, finely calibrated tone.”

Krasznahorkai is the second Hungarian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, following Imre Kertész in 2002.

Born in the small southeastern town of Gyula, near the Romanian border, Krasznahorkai achieved international recognition with his 1985 novel Satantango, set in a desolate Hungarian village just before the fall of communism.

“The novel portrays, in powerfully suggestive terms, a destitute group of residents on an abandoned collective farm in the Hungarian countryside,” the Academy said.

Krasznahorkai has long collaborated with acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, whose adaptations of Satantango and The Werckmeister Harmonies have earned critical acclaim. In 1993, Krasznahorkai received the German Bestenliste Prize for The Melancholy of Resistance, awarded to the best literary work of the year.