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László Krasznahorkai, who won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature today, is not the easiest writer to read. His sentences can go on for hundreds of pages; his plots don’t resolve, they dissolve; and his persistent mood is existential dread. But the Hungarian novelist’s central theme is easily parsed and sadly evergreen. Krasznahorkai writes about the stultifying effects of political oppression, but he also writes in defiance of people’s readiness to accept them. As a result, his work is equal parts depressing and invigorating. His landscapes are muddy and void, prone to sudden invasion by disturbing strangers, including the giant whale carcass that arrives on a train at the beginning of his 1989 novel, The Melancholy of Resistance. His never-ending sentences reflect the alienation of his characters, but they can also shake readers out of their torpor by propelling them forever forward, phrase into phrase, image into image.
Announcement of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature
Noble Prize
Streamed live 10 hours ago #NobelPrize
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025 was awarded to László Krasznahorkai, "for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art." The Nobel Prize in Literature was announced at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, Sweden. #NobelPrize
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaWVus4DtLo
“He is an extension of the European modernist epic writing.”
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 9, 2025
Steve Sem-Sandberg, member of the Nobel Committee for Literature, speaks about newly announced 2025 Nobel Prize laureate László Krasznahorkai. Sem-Sandberg also commented on Krasznahorkai's first novel 'Satantango':… pic.twitter.com/1SI2oeYI8T
