The new Nobel Laureate in Literature 2025 – László Krasznahorkai.

A true force of writing and a national treasure of Hungary. We still remember his monumental Satantango — and the tiny Spadework for a Palace — and we’re always delighted when a new book of his appears. Even when a single chapter is one long sentence winding across pages, you keep reading. Because what Krasznahorkai does best is create atmosphere — dense, strange, unforgettable.

He’s been a bookmakers’ favourite for years — and now he’s finally won. A well-deserved honour for one of Europe’s most extraordinary storytellers.

László Krasznahorkai, awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in 1954 in Gyula, a small town in south-eastern Hungary near the Romanian border. Known for his long, winding sentences and apocalyptic imagination, he is widely regarded as one of Europe’s most distinctive literary voices. His breakthrough novel Satantango (1985) — later adapted into a cult film by Béla Tarr — depicts a decaying Hungarian village caught between despair and a fragile hope of salvation. He went on to write The Melancholy of Resistance (1989) and War & War (1999), works that confirmed his reputation; critic Susan Sontag famously called him “the master of the apocalypse”. In later years, Krasznahorkai turned towards the East, producing more meditative, lyrical works such as Seiobo There Below (2008) and A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East, inspired by his travels in Japan and China. Krasznahorkai’s prose is demanding yet deeply humane; his characters wander between ruin and revelation, searching for meaning in a world teetering on the brink. He writes as a modern myth-maker — patient, precise, and unflinching in his gaze into the abyss.

Relaciones misericordiosas