Hungarian novelist Krasznahorkai László, 71, won the 2025 Nobel Prize in literature.
The Swedish Academy said on the 9th (local time) that it had selected Krasznahorkai László as this year's Nobel Prize in literature laureate. A Hungarian writer winning the Nobel Prize in literature is the second time since Imre Kertész in 2002.
The Academy said it was awarding the prize for "his intense and pioneering oeuvre, which reaffirms the power of art even amid apocalyptic fear."
It continued, "Krasznahorkai is a great epic writer in the Central European tradition from Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, characterized by absurdity and grotesque excess," adding, "But there is much more in his work, and he also looks to the East by adopting a more contemplative and finely tuned tone."
According to AFP, Krasznahorkai said on Swedish radio that day that it was his "first day as a Nobel laureate," adding that he felt "very happy and calm, yet tense."
Krasznahorkai is a writer who built his reputation with the debut novel Satan Tango (1985) and The Melancholy of Resistance (1989). In 2015, he became the first Hungarian writer to win the Man Booker Prize (now the Booker Prize) in the international category.
The Booker Prize judging panel at the time lavished praise, citing "astonishing sentences, sentences of unbelievable length that burrow with incredible depth, a tone that veers from solemnity to frenzy, doubt, and desolation."