The 2025 Nobel Prize in literature went to the Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai for his “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”. In his immediate reaction to the novel, he had called his win “more than a catastrophe”, echoing Beckett, whose response was “what a catastrophe”. Krasznahorkai continued “That’s why I told you first that this is more than a catastrophe, it’s happiness and proudness. I’m very happy and I’m very proud, because to be in the line which contains so many really great writers and poets gives me power to use my original language, the Hungarian language. I am really very proud and very happy to use this little language.”
Born in Gyula in Hungary, in 1954, he studied law, but started writing as a student. His novels are available in English translations by the English poets Georg Sziret and Ottilie Mulzet. He is the second Hungarian writer to receive the prize, after Imre Kertész. He is a frequent collaborator of the director Bella Tar, with whom he has co-written screenplays, and who made two direct adaptations of his work. Satantango, notable for its over 7 hours long runtime, and Werckmeister Harmonies, an adaptation of The Melancholy of Resistance.
Satantango was his first book, released in 1985, and it instantly made his name respected in Hungarian literary circles, if not exactly gaining him a wide readership. The novel is about a Hungarian village that breaks down after the arrival of the mysterious, charming Irimiás, rumoured to be dead, who starts convincing the villagers to join his enterprise. It is up to the reader to decide whether he is a con man, a devil, or a messiah. The bleakness of his vision, the dark comedy, and the distinct, intense prose style made it a cult classic in Hungary. When it was finally translated into English, it was welcomed as a tale of communism in decay, showing the inability of Western reviewers to understand Eastern European writers as anything other than prophets of collectivist dysfunction, minor regional variations on Solzhenitsyn. But Krasznahorkai seemed less interested in presenting any sociological vision and more in capturing a world from which God has gone, all attempts to replace him having failed, and the only thing left to do is place one’s faith in whatever comes, knowing that to look at it too closely can only lead to madness. Krasznahorkai’s books are like an anthill after the queen has died; his characters are just mechanically going through the motions without any underlying meaning behind them, without any sense of purpose, slowly waiting to die out.
This can be seen clearly in his second novel, The Melancholy of Resistance. It is a tale of a town that goes mad after the arrival of a travelling circus, which carries only some embryos and a dead whale. A possible joke on Melville? That this is what great books have become, dead and exhibited, stinking up the place. When the book was published in the English translation, Susan Sontag called Krasznahorkai “the master of the apocalypse”. Throughout the novel, there is a sense that something is going to happen, something cataclysmic that will forever do away with any pretensions of civilisation. It will happen, and it will happen soon, everybody knows, and everybody is dealing with it in any way they can. The sense of doom, while always imminent, is never truly realised. A mob pillages the town under the influence of the whale, but we are graced with the morning after, the uncomprehending faces, the rubbish, the carcass. If the whale was supposed to be a stand-in for a God, civilisation, universe, fascism, what have you, it is clear that any spell it can cast is temporary, and in the end, what is left is a taxidermied corpse, no longer possessing any symbolism at all.
Krasznahorkai’s novels often turn towards magical realism not through the way of Marquez but through Kafka. Kafka is one of Krasznahorkai’s influences, he once said: “When I am not reading Kafka, I am thinking about Kafka. When I am not thinking about Kafka, I miss thinking about him. Having missed thinking about him for a while, I take him out and read him again.” The other obvious source of inspiration is Beckett, especially in his early work. His early novels are reminiscent of Beckett’s trilogy, both in their general bleakness as well as formally; in fact, the ending of Satantango uses the same narrative trick that Beckett employed in Molloy. A feature of Krasnohorkai’s work are his long sentences and even longer paragraphs. Finding a period is a relief; a paragraph break is like a vacation. His translator linked his sentences to “a slow lava-flow of narrative, a vast black river of type”. This feature has become even more pronounced as he is developing a late style, with his latest novel, Herscht 07769, only having one comma. His novels have also shifted in thematic focus. Whilst his early novels have concerned provincial Hungarian towns and villages, his latest novels have been more cosmopolitan in scope, encompassing Germany, New York, as well as the cultures of China and Japan after he travelled there in 1990. In writing War and War, he received help from Allen Ginsberg, even stayed in his New York apartment. His late novels are more concerned with social reality. In his first two novels, it is hard to imagine someone driving a car, watching television, or voting. By contrast, in Herscht 07769, the main character writes (unanswered) letters to Angela Merkel. By focusing on phenomena of the 21st century, he gets to examine reality more fully, but even then, his novels never stop showing the falsity of all Gods and idols. His work is a great chronicle of a civilisation where the centre is missing.
