László Krasznahorkai is awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Swedish Academy announced on 9 October 2025 that the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025 had been awarded to the Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai. The citation praised a compelling and visionary body of work that, amid apocalyptic terror, affirms the power of art.

Krasznahorkai, who was 71 at the time of the announcement, is known for dark, long-sentenced novels and novellas. His first novel, Satantango, published in 1985, concerns a pair of swindlers and a nearly abandoned collective farm, and was adapted into a seven-hour film in 1994. The Melancholy of Resistance centres on a strange circus that arrives in a small town with a huge stuffed whale.

He had previously won the Man Booker International Prize in 2015, when that award was still given for a body of work.

Krasznahorkai's prose is famously demanding, and his readership in English has grown slowly, book by book, through translation. The award is a reminder that difficult work can find its audience over decades, and that the patience of translators and small publishers is part of how that happens.

Sources: NobelPrize.org: Nobel Prize in Literature 2025, press release; NPR: László Krasznahorkai wins 2025 Nobel Prize in literature.