László Krasznahorkai - 2025 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature
On October 9, 2025, Beijing time, Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature.
About Author
László Krasznahorkai (1954– ), one of the most important contemporary Hungarian writers, is the winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize. He has received nearly all major Hungarian literary honors, including the Kossuth Prize, the Republic’s Laurel Wreath, and the Márai Prize, as well as the American National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2014. Deeply fascinated by Chinese culture, Krasznahorkai has visited China multiple times, and his works often reveal reflections inspired by Eastern philosophy.
Krasznahorkai’s novels are known for their long, winding sentences, fragmented narratives, and strong postmodern sensibility. Often employing multiple intertwined storylines, his works depict “the stagnation of time” and “the absurdity of existence”. Focusing on human suffering, the capriciousness of fate, and the disillusionment of society, his dense language and rich imagery have earned him the title of a “master of literary revelation.” The Nobel Committee commended him for “his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”.
Book Recommendation
Satantango
Pushing reality to the brink of madness, it offers a reading experience that challenges all limits.
This literary masterpiece is widely regarded as one of the most important works of the 20th century. Set in a decaying collective farm soaked by endless rain, the novel unfolds in twelve chapters that mirror the rhythm of a tango, “six steps forward, six steps back”. It portrays how the villagers are trapped in a perpetual cycle of hope and deceit. The arrival of two mysterious figures, Irimiás, believed to be dead, and his companion, plunges the entire village into a carefully orchestrated collective delusion. Here, Krasznahorkai crafts his signature “endless sentences”, turning language itself into a philosophical meditation on time and existence.
Kegyelmi viszonyok
Call Number: PH3281.K8866 L37 2020 CN
So we’d better rid ourselves of all emotion. Stop observing and examining.
This short story collection serves as the best introduction to Krasznahorkai’s literary universe. The short version of The Melancholy of Resistance can be seen as a prelude to his later novel of the same name, while the other stories explore various extreme states of human nature. In these works, Krasznahorkai demonstrates that even without the vast structure of a novel, he can still create a suffocating literary world through the rhythm and density of his language. Readers can experience in this collection all his core themes: paranoia, solitude, the pursuit of truth, and the limits of art.
Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming
Call Number: PH3281.K8866 K73 2019
This novel, hailed as the culminating work of Krasznahorkai’s career, tells the story of a baron who returns to his hometown in Hungary after years of exile. Hoping for a peaceful old age, he instead becomes entangled in a series of absurd events. Through multiple perspectives, the novel paints a vivid portrait of a society torn apart by conspiracy theories, nationalism, and various forms of fanaticism. With his characteristic long, flowing sentences and recursive narrative structure, Krasznahorkai constructs a grand allegory about memory, identity, and the burdens of history, hailed by critics as “a mournful elegy for the European spirit”.
Az ellenállás melankóliája
People still try to pry it open with stubborn silence.
The novel centers on a whale specimen transported to a small Hungarian town and a mysterious prince. Through a fragmented narrative, it depicts how the entire community descends into collective paranoia and a spiritual crisis. As the townspeople confront this enormous “whale of truth”, each seeks their own system of interpretation, from musical theory to fascist ideology. The work was adapted into the film Werckmeister Harmonies, which perfectly captures the slowly collapsing world of Krasznahorkai’s fiction and humanity’s desperate struggle to find meaning amid the void.
WKU Library already holds some of the recommended books mentioned above. Readers are welcome to borrow them.
Content | LIN Yujia
Layout | HU Linxiao
Review | HU Linxiao & REN Yuanyuan