Nobel Prize for Literature: Play of prose in László Krasznahorkai’s writing

Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai has won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature. He was born in 1954 in the small town of Gyula in southeast Hungary, near the Romanian border. Here are some of his major works as listed by Anders Olsson, Chair of the Nobel Committee:

1. Sátántangó (1985; Satantango, 2012)

Olsson writes that Krasznahorkai’s first novel, Sátántangó, published in 1985, was a literary sensation in Hungary and the author’s breakthrough work. The novel portrays, in powerfully suggestive terms, a destitute group of residents on an abandoned collective farm in the Hungarian countryside just before the fall of communism. Silence and anticipation reign, until the charismatic Irimiás and his crony Petrina, who were believed by all to be dead, suddenly appear on the scene. To the waiting residents, they seem as messengers either of hope or of the last judgement. The satanic element referred to in the title is present in their slave morality and in the pretences of the trickster Irimiás which, effective as they are deceitful, leave almost all of them tied up in knots. Everyone in the novel is waiting for a miracle to happen, a hope that is from the very outset punctured by the book’s introductory Kafka motto: “In that case, I’ll miss the thing by waiting for it.”

2. Az ellenállás melankóliája (1989; The Melancholy of Resistance, 1998)

The American critic Susan Sontag soon crowned Krasznahorkai contemporary literature’s “master of the apocalypse”, a judgment she arrived at after having read the author’s second book, ‘Az ellenállás melankóliája’, writes Olsson. Here, in a feverish horror fantasy played out in a small Hungarian town nestled in a Carpathian valley, the drama has been heightened even further. From the very first page, we – together with the charmless Mrs Pflaum – find ourselves entering a dizzying state of emergency. Ominous signs abound. Crucial to the dramatic sequence of events is the arrival in the city of a ghostly circus, whose main attraction is the carcass of a giant whale. This mysterious and menacing spectacle sets extreme forces in motion, prompting the spread of both violence and vandalism. Meanwhile, the inability of the military to prevent anarchy creates the possibility of a dictatorial coup. Employing dreamlike scenes and grotesque characterisations, László Krasznahorkai masterfully portrays the brutal struggle between order and disorder. None may escape the effects of terror.

3. Háború és háború (1999; War & War, 2006)

In this novel, Krasznahorkai shifts his attention beyond the borders of his Hungarian homeland by allowing the humble archivist Korin to decide, as his life’s final act, to travel from the outskirts of Budapest to New York so that he might, for a moment, take his place at the centre of the world. Back home in the archives, he has found an exceptionally beautiful ancient epic about returning warriors that he hopes to make known to the world, Olsson writes. Krasznahorkai’s prose develops towards the flowing syntax with long, winding sentences devoid of full stops that has become his signature style.

4. Báró Wenckheim hazatér (2016; Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming, 2019)

“War & War, in its rolling picaresque, anticipates this great novel, although here the focus is on returning to the homeland.” Olsson says that Krasznahorkai plays lavishly with literary tradition, as Dostoyevsky’s idiot is reincarnated in the hopelessly infatuated baron with his gambling addiction. Now ruined, he returns to Hungary after many years in exile in Argentina, hoping to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart. Unhappily, he places his life in the hands of the treacherous Dante, a rascal presented as a grimy version of Sancho Panza. The climax of the novel, which is in many ways its comic highlight, is the joyful reception laid on for the baron by the local community – an event the melancholic protagonist desperately seeks to avoid.

5. Herscht 07769: Florian Herscht Bach-regénye (2021; Herscht 07769: A Novel, 2024)

“This fifth work can be added to Krasznahorkai’s “apocalyptic” epics. Here, the setting is not a feverish nightmare in the Carpathians but a contemporary small town in Thüringen, Germany, which is nevertheless afflicted by social anarchy, murder, and arson. The terror of the novel unfolds against the backdrop of Johann Sebastian Bach’s powerful legacy. Written in a single breath, it is a story of violence and beauty “impossibly” conjoined. Herscht 07769 has been described as a great contemporary German novel for its accuracy in portraying the country’s social unrest. In equal measure, the protagonist Herscht is a credulous, big-hearted child – a holy fool in the spirit of Dostoyevsky – who realizes too late that he has placed his trust in the very powers behind the town’s destruction. With Krasznahorkai, there is always room for the unpredictable, as the novel’s dramatic ending shows,” Olsson adds.

Source: “Biobibliography,” NobelPrize.org, Nobel Prize Outreach, 2025, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2025/bio-bibliography/