Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai wins Nobel Prize in Literature 2025

Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy announced Thursday.

The Nobel committee honoured Krasznahorkai “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

Who is László Krasznahorkai?

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.

Born in 1954 in the small Hungarian town of Gyula, Krasznahorkai is celebrated as one of Central Europe’s most original literary voices.

Krasznahorkai first gained international attention with his debut novel Sátántangó (1985), later adapted into a seven-hour film by director Béla Tarr. The book’s bleak portrayal of life in a desolate Hungarian village at the twilight of communism established his reputation as a chronicler of existential collapse.

American critic Susan Sontag once described him as “the contemporary master of the apocalypse.”

In later years, Krasznahorkai’s fiction turned eastward, influenced by his travels in China and Japan. His book Seiobo There Below (2008) is widely regarded as one of his masterpieces.

Krasznahorkai joins a long line of Central European Nobel laureates in literature, including Imre Kertész, Wisława Szymborska, and Olga Tokarczuk.

The literature prize has been awarded by the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy 118 times to a total of 122 winners.

Nobel Prize in literature is the fourth to be announced this week, following the 2025 Nobels in medicine, physics and chemistry.