The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded on Thursday to László Krasznahorkai, the Hungarian novelist celebrated for his dense, philosophical prose and bleakly comic vision of humanity. The Swedish Academy honored him for what it called “a compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.” Krasznahorkai, 71, is best known for sprawling novels whose sentences can run for pages, their rhythms capturing both the chaos and absurdity of modern life. His debut, Satantango, and his later novel The Melancholy of Resistance were adapted into acclaimed films by Hungarian director Béla Tarr, whose stark, meditative style mirrored Krasznahorkai’s literary world. In awarding the prize, the committee praised his “artistic gaze, entirely free of illusion, that perceives the fragility of the social order while maintaining an unwavering faith in art’s endurance.” Krasznahorkai’s international reputation has long been secure. He won the Man Booker International Prize in 2015 for a body of work recognized for its “extraordinary sentences—of astonishing length and shifting tone, by turns solemn, madcap, quizzical and desolate.” In 2019, his novel Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming received the National Book Award for Translated Literature in the United States. He is the first Hungarian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature since Imre Kertész in 2002, joining an illustrious lineage that includes Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison and Kazuo Ishiguro. The literature prize, awarded 117 times to 121 laureates, follows this week’s announcements of the 2025 Nobel Prizes in medicine, physics and chemistry. Last year’s laureate was the South Korean novelist Han Kang, recognized for work that “confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday, with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to follow on Monday. Nobel Prizes are presented annually on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896. A Swedish inventor and industrialist, Nobel established the prizes in his will. Each award includes 11 million Swedish kronor (nearly $1.2 million), along with an 18-karat gold medal and a diploma. (With AP Inputs)
