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The prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature for this year has been bestowed upon Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, as declared by the committee.

The Academy highlighted the seventy-one-year-old's "compelling and visionary collection that, amidst end-times dread, reasserts the power of the arts."

An Esteemed Career of Dystopian Writing

Krasznahorkai is renowned for his bleak, somber books, which have won many prizes, including the 2019 National Book Award for international writing and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize.

A number of of his novels, notably his novels Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been adapted into feature films.

Early Beginnings

Born in the Hungarian town of Gyula in the mid-1950s, Krasznahorkai first rose to prominence with his 1985 debut novel his seminal novel, a bleak and captivating portrayal of a disintegrating rural community.

The book would eventually earn the Man Booker International Prize award in the English language decades after, in the 2010s.

An Unconventional Literary Style

Frequently labeled as postmodernist, Krasznahorkai is known for his lengthy, intricate sentences (the twelve chapters of his novel each are a solitary block of text), dystopian and somber subjects, and the kind of unwavering force that has led literary experts to liken him to Gogol, Melville and Kafka.

Satantango was widely made into a lengthy movie by filmmaker the director Béla Tarr, with whom Krasznahorkai has had a enduring artistic collaboration.

"He is a significant epic writer in the central European literary tradition that traces back to Franz Kafka to Bernhard, and is defined by the absurd and grotesque exaggeration," said the committee chair, chair of the Nobel jury.

He characterized Krasznahorkai’s writing as having "progressed to … continuous structure with lengthy, intricate sentences lacking full stops that has become his hallmark."

Literary Praise

Susan Sontag has described the author as "the contemporary from Hungary expert of apocalypse," while the writer W.G. Sebald applauded the universality of his outlook.

A handful of Krasznahorkai’s books have been rendered in English translation. The critic James Wood once wrote that his books "circulate like valuable artifacts."

Global Influences

Krasznahorkai’s literary path has been molded by journeys as much as by his writing. He first departed from the communist his homeland in 1987, residing a twelve months in Berlin for a grant, and later drew inspiration from Eastern Asia – particularly Asian nations – for books such as one of his titles, and Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens.

While writing War and War, he explored across Europe and stayed in Ginsberg's New York apartment, stating the renowned poet's backing as crucial to finalizing the novel.

Krasznahorkai on His Work

Questioned how he would describe his oeuvre in an discussion, Krasznahorkai said: "Characters; then from these characters, words; then from these terms, some brief phrases; then more sentences that are more extended, and in the primary exceptionally extended phrases, for the duration of decades. Beauty in writing. Fun in hell."

On audiences encountering his writing for the first time, he added: "For any people who haven’t read my works, I couldn’t recommend any specific title to read to them; on the contrary, I’d recommend them to go out, sit down at a location, perhaps by the side of a brook, with no obligations, nothing to think about, just being in tranquility like boulders. They will eventually come across a person who has already read my books."

Nobel Prize Context

Ahead of the reveal, bookmakers had listed the frontrunners for this year’s prize as Can Xue, an innovative Chinese writer, and Krasznahorkai himself.

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been presented on one hundred seventeen past events since 1901. Recent laureates include Ernaux, Bob Dylan, Gurnah, the poet, the Austrian and Tokarczuk. The previous year's winner was the South Korean writer, the South Korean writer most famous for her acclaimed novel.

Krasznahorkai will ceremonially accept the award and document in a event in the month of December in the Swedish capital.

Updates to come