Hungarian Novelist László Krasznahorkai Awarded Nobel Literature Prize

On Thursday, Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for a powerful, visionary body of work that, even amid apocalyptic themes, underscores the enduring force of art.

Krasznahorkai, 71, is known for philosophical, bleakly funny novels that often unfold in single sentences. Several of his works, including his debut “Satantango” and “The Melancholy of Resistance,” were adapted into films by Hungarian director Béla Tarr. The Nobel judges praised his “artistic gaze which is entirely free of illusion, and which sees through the fragility of the social order combined with his unwavering belief in the power of art.”

He has earned major honors, including the 2015 Man Booker International Prize, whose judges praised his remarkably long, shape-shifting sentences and their tonal range—from solemn to playful, inquisitive to desolate. In 2019, he received the U.S. National Book Award for Translated Literature for Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming.

Krasznahorkai is the first laureate from Hungary since Imre Kertész in 2002. He joins a list of Nobel literature winners that includes Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison and Kazuo Ishiguro.

The literature prize has been awarded by the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy 117 times to a total of 121 winners. Last year’s prize went to South Korean author Han Kang for a body of work that the committee said “confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

This year’s literature award is the fourth Nobel announced this week, following the 2025 prizes in medicine, physics and chemistry. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday, and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced on Monday.

The Nobel Prize awards are presented each year on December 10, marking the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896. Nobel, a Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite, founded the prizes. Each prize carries 11 million Swedish kronor (nearly $1.2 million); winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and a diploma.

Source: nbcnews