How László Krasznahorkai’s Nobel Prize-winning genius slowly spread around Europe

When László Krasznahorkai, winner of the 2025 Nobel prize in literature, first burst onto Hungary’s literary scene in 1985, it was clear he was a unique talent. His first novel, Satantango, soon became a cult classic.

The novel’s Hungarian readers were living in the stifling atmosphere of the dying years of state socialism. They were quick to understand the parallels between the the novel – about an isolated rural community – and their own isolation from the rest of the world.

They were drawn, too, to Satantango’s sense of physical and psychological decay, and the way it recognised the mundanity of their everyday lives. At least, that was my experience when I first read the book in 1985 in Budapest as an undergraduate student of Hungarian literature.

Oppressive atmosphere and stagnation often feature in the work of Central European writers. But, unlike the oeuvre of many earlier authors, Krasznahorkai’s writing also gained immense popularity on the international – or more specifically, German – scene.

To some extent, this was the result of timing. In the 1980s, western readers often still reacted to art portraying the world behind the recently demolished iron curtain with a mixture of amazement and curiosity.

Novels set in “new Europe” appeared in great numbers, exemplified by British novelists...

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