Nobel Prize writer László Krasznahorkai: A great pessimist and unapologetic traditionalist

Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai has won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature for “his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”.

Krasznahorkai is the author of nine novels, numerous collections of short fiction and essays, and several screenplays, including co-writing the epic seven-hour film adaptation of his first book Satantango (1985). He is one of the most distinctive, recognisable writers in the world today.

At the heart of Krasznahorkai’s project is the old Beckettian dialectic between pervasive bleakness and ethical despair, and a madly propulsive, inexhaustible engine of language.

His language is the mad scream of a godless universe at our inexcusable squandering of every good thing given to us by chance. The voluble form stirs up the broken content in an irresistible current, flowing from the Big Bang to Paradise – right past our lost world.

His prose is difficult to excerpt. The sentences never end, so even a few quoted words inevitably draw one into the vortex of an all-consuming syntactical storm system. There is no way out once you are drawn in. You find yourself in a stylistic quicksand that is perversely comforting.

Anarcho-capitalist-klepto-nihilism

Krasznahorkai’s work has frequently been described as “apocalyptic”, and that is accurate enough. But what is the nature of his...

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