THE Laszlo Krasnahorkai (László Krasznahorkai) is the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in 1954 in eastern HungaryKrasnakhorkai is also a screenwriter, and many of his novels, including his early efforts, have been adapted into films by Bella Tarr. As the Swedish Academy states in the rationale for the award, Krasnahorkai “has completed an imposing work of a visionary character, which confirms through its apocalyptic terror the power of art”.

Krasnahorkai’s novels, influenced by Dostoyevskyby Bernhard and him Beckettare complex, multi-layered and possibly nebulous, characteristics which did not make it difficult for them to approach a serious and anything but oligarchy (by his standards) readership. It should be noted that most of Krasnahorkai’s books have also been published in Greek with valid and timely translations from Polis editions.

With clearly postmodern orientationwith data dystopia and with an inner, depressive corewhich sometimes deals with history and sometimes with religion and theology, Krasnahorkai had a lawyer father and a mother who worked as a social security consultant.

He wrote his first novel set against the background of his place of origin (the town of Gyula in southeastern Hungary, near the border with Romania), and under the title “Sátántangó”, in 1985 (“Satan’s Tango», translated by Ioanna Avramidou, Polis, 2018).

Everyone here is waiting for a miracle that will remain in its waiting, referring to Kafka, but also to Beckett.

In “Melancholy of resistance» (translated by Ioanna Avramidou, Polis, 2016) we will find a story of horror, ghosts and farcical surprises in a small Hungarian town, near the Carpathians, which is on the verge of perfection. The novel led Susan Sontag to call Krasnakhorkai “the master of the Apocalypse, because no citizen can escape the explosive mixture of paralyzing terror and demonic confusion.

With the “War and war» (translated by Ioanna Avramidou, Polis 2015) we will be transported from Budapest to New York, following a long journey through space and time of violence, annihilation and destruction.

“The Return of Baron Vendaya(translated by Manuela Berki, Polis, 2020) unfolds the story of a baron who has been absent from Hungary for many years, only to find himself upon his return in a landscape of absolute corruption and fraud with the final condemnation standing inexorably at the door.

The “Hurst 07769» (translated by Manuela Berki, Polis, 2023) opens up a field of living hell for the just and the unjust. Persecutions, disappearances, Nazi memories, intertwining of politics with the economic collapse of the planet.

Krasnahorkai’s most recent works are “Seibo passed down there” (translated by Manuela Berki, Polis 2019), a novel about the sacred and about love, and the “The bread roll goes too» (translated by Manuela Berki, Polis, 2025), an exterminating satire and de-fixation of everything.

Krasnakhorkai has been honored with the Kossuth Awardwhich is Hungary’s most important distinction, and with the German award Bestenliste-Prize while in 2015 he was awarded the Man Booker International.

His novels have been influenced by his travels to Europe and East Asia after he left the Hungarian Communist Party in 1987.

Krasnahorkai is the second Hungarian author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature after Imre Kerteszin 2002.