Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai has won the 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature, the award committee announced Thursday.
The prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy and is valued at 11 million kronor (1.6 million Canadian dollars).
Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, praised Krasznahorkai's “visionary work, which, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”
The honor for 71-year-old Krasznagorkaj comes ten years after he won the prestigious International Booker Prize. He is perhaps best known for the 1989 novel. Melancholy of resistance which four years later he won the German Bestenliste award.
American critic Susan Sontag hailed Krasznahorkai as a “master of the apocalypse” after reading the book, the academy said Friday.
Influenced by Kafka
In an interview published on the Nobel Prize website on Thursday, Krasnagorkai said he was surprised by the honor and proud to “be among so many truly great writers and poets.”
Krasznahorkai, who was in Germany on Thursday, said he would “cook dinner with my friends here in Frankfurt, with port and champagne.”
Viktor Orbán congratulated his compatriot in a short post on X, although in the past the writer was a fierce critic of the Hungarian prime minister.
Krasznahorkai was born in the small town of Gyula in southeastern Hungary, near the border with Romania.
The settings of his novels ranged from the remote villages and towns of Central Europe, from Hungary to Germany, to the Far East, and his travels to China and Japan are said to have left deep impressions.
His breakthrough novel was 1985. SateadThe story is set in a remote rural area and became a literary sensation in Hungary.
This work resonated because collective farms were created after the confiscation of agricultural land at the beginning of communist rule, but by the time it ended in 1989, many of these farms had become symbols of mismanagement and poverty.
Speaking to Swedish Radio, Krasznahorkai said he only planned to write one book, but after reading his debut novel, he wanted to improve his writing by writing another one.
“My life is a constant correction,” he said.
Krasnagorkay has a very good referee Lock early 20th century writer Franz Kafka, a key influence.
“When I'm not reading Kafka, I'm thinking about Kafka. When I'm not thinking about Kafka, I miss thinking about him,” he told White Review in 2013.
Frequent collaborator is delighted
Krasznahorkai maintains close creative collaboration with Hungarian director Béla Tarr. Several of his works were adapted into films by Tarr, including Sateadwhich lasts more than seven hours.
“When I read it, I immediately knew I had to make a film out of it,” Tarr told Reuters by phone. “I’m very happy… it’s hard to say anything right now.”
Tarr also adapted the writer's work Werkmeister Harmonies.
Past notable literary laureates include George Bernard Shaw, Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel García Márquez and, in 2013, Canadian Alice Munro. Last year this honor was awarded to South Korean Kang.
Krasznahorkai became the second Hungarian to receive this prize, after Imre Kertész in 2002.
The Nobel Prizes are awarded to laureates at a ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday, and the Nobel Prize in Economics will be announced on Monday.
The committee that selects peace prize winners said there were 338 nominees up for nomination, up from last year's total of 286 nominees. The list of nominees is revealed only 50 years after the award is presented.
The peace prize nomination period closed on January 31.
Last year the Peace Prize was awarded Japanese mass group Nihon Hidankyodedicated to the cause of a nuclear-free world. The group formed in 1956, ten years after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of people and exposing civilians to radiation.
