Krasznahorkai wins 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature

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

Nobel Committee chair Anders Olsson said, “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. But there are more strings to his bow, and he soon 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.”

Krasznahorkai’s first novel Sátántangó, published in 1985 (Satantango, trans by George Szirtes, Tuskar Rock, 2012), “was a literary sensation in Hungary and the author’s breakthrough work,” said Olsson. “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.”

His 2003 novel Északról hegy, Délről tó, Nyugatról utak, Keletről folyó (A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East, trans by Ottilie Mulzet, Tuskar Rock) is “a mysterious tale with powerful lyrical sections that takes place southeast of Kyoto,” said Olsson. “The work has the sense of a prelude to the rich Seiobo járt odalent (Seiobo There Below, [trans by Ottilie Mulzet, Tuskar Rock]), a collection of seventeen stories arranged in a Fibonacci sequence about the role of beauty and artistic creation in a world of blindness and impermanence.”

In 2025, Krasznahorkai won the Man Booker International Prize and was praised as a “visionary writer of extraordinary intensity and vocal range”, and his novels “magnificent works of deep imagination and complex passions”.

The Nobel Prize for Literature carries a cash prize of 11 million Swedish kronor (A$1.75m). Presentation of the winner medals will take place at a ceremony on 10 December.

Last year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature was South Korean author Han Kang.

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