Hungarian master of dystopian fiction wins Nobel Prize in Literature

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, the Swedish Academy announced, citing his “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

Born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954, the 71-year-old author is celebrated for his dystopian, melancholic novels, which have garnered numerous international awards, including the 2015 Man Booker International Prize and the 2019 National Book Award for translated literature.

Several of his works, including Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been adapted into films.

Krasznahorkai first gained attention with his 1985 debut, Satantango, a haunting depiction of a collapsing rural community. The novel was later awarded the Man Booker International Prize in English in 2013 and was famously adapted into a seven-hour film by director Béla Tarr, with whom Krasznahorkai has maintained a long creative partnership.

Known for his long, labyrinthine sentences and intense, postmodern style, Krasznahorkai’s work has drawn comparisons to Gogol, Melville, and Kafka. Susan Sontag called him “the contemporary Hungarian master of apocalypse,” while W.G. Sebald praised the universality of his vision.

Travel has significantly influenced Krasznahorkai’s writing. He left communist Hungary in 1987 for a fellowship in West Berlin, and later drew inspiration from East Asia, including Mongolia and China, for novels such as The Prisoner of Urga and Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens. During the creation of War and War, he travelled across Europe and stayed in Allen Ginsberg’s New York apartment, crediting the Beat poet’s support as essential to completing the novel.

Krasznahorkai follows last year’s laureate, South Korean author Han Kang, known for The Vegetarian. He will formally receive the Nobel medal and diploma in a ceremony in December in Stockholm.

By Tamilla Hasanova