Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai wins Nobel Prize in Literature 2025

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

“This year’s Nobel Prize laureate in literature László 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,” said the Nobel Prize official page in a post on X.

He was born in 1954 in the small town of Gyula in southeast Hungary, near the Romanian border. Krasznahorkai’s first novel ‘Sátántangó’, published in 1985, shows a similar rural scene. Some of his works include Az ellenállás melankóliája (1989), Háború és háború (1999), War & War, Herscht 07769: Florian Herscht Bach- regénye (2021), among others.

Steve Sem-Sandberg, member of the Nobel Committee for Literature, said, “He is an extension of the European modernist epic writing.”

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When the committee spoke to the writer, he shared his joy, excitement, pride about being the latest Nobel Prize winner and said, ““To read books gives us more power to survive these very difficult times on Earth.”

“It is this artistic gaze – free of illusion, seeing clearly through the fragility of social order – combined with his unwavering belief in the power of art, that has led the Swedish Academy to award him with the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature,” the official page added.