Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature: “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

Born in 1954 in the Hungarian town of Gyula, Krasznahorkai rose to international prominence with his 1985 debut Sátántangó, a bleak and hypnotic portrayal of a collapsing collective farm in late communist Hungary. The book, later adapted into a seven-hour film by director Béla Tarr, established his reputation for long, spiralling sentences and an apocalyptic sensibility that has defined his career.

Among his acclaimed works are The Melancholy of Resistance (1989), War & War (1999), and Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming (2016), which together trace humanity’s struggle to find coherence amid disorder. His more recent novel Herscht 07769 (2021), published in English in 2024, explores contemporary unrest in Germany.

A second strand in Krasznahorkai’s writing reflects his engagement with East Asia and the pursuit of artistic transcendence, notably in Seiobo There Below (2008) and A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East (2003). Susan Sontag once described him as contemporary literature’s: “master of the apocalypse,” praising the intensity and ambition of his prose.

The Nobel Committee lauded his ability to reaffirm the creative spirit: “in the midst of apocalyptic terror.” Krasznahorkai joins fellow Hungarian laureate Imre Kertész in receiving the world’s highest literary honour.