László Krasznahorkai: Meet the Hungarian author who won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature

“I am very happy,” the 70-year-old author told Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Radio, as quoted by the BBC. “I’m calm and very nervous altogether,” he said after learning of the honour.

Born in 1954 in Gyula, a small town in southeastern Hungary near the Romanian border, Krasznahorkai gained international acclaim with his debut novel Sátántangó (1985; translated as Satantango, 2012). The work, set in a desolate collective farm in the Hungarian countryside on the brink of communism’s collapse, became a literary sensation in Hungary and marked his breakthrough.

Often described as a great epic writer in the Central European tradition of Kafka and Thomas Bernhard, Krasznahorkai’s prose is known for its long, meandering sentences, absurdist tone, and darkly comic exploration of human despair.

His 2003 novel Északról hegy, Délről tó, Nyugatról utak, Keletről folyó (A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East, English translation 2022) unfolds as a lyrical and meditative tale set southeast of Kyoto, Japan.

Krasznahorkai, whose works have been translated into several languages, previously received the Man Booker International Prize in 2015.