The 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

Born in 1954 in the small town of Gyula in southeastern Hungary, near the Romanian border, László Krasznahorkai depicted the remote rural setting reminiscent of his native region in his first novel, “Sátántangó” (1985; Azerbaijani translation “Satantango,” 2012). The novel became a major literary event in Hungary and marked the author’s breakthrough. Set in a desolate collective farm in the Hungarian countryside shortly before the fall of communism, it vividly portrays the lives of impoverished villagers through powerful literary language. Silence and anticipation prevail—until the sudden arrival of the charismatic Irimiás and his companion Petrina, long presumed dead. To the waiting villagers, they appear as messengers of hope—or perhaps of the Apocalypse. The “satanic” element in the title is embodied in their servile nature and in Irimiás’s behavior, which is both persuasive and deceitful. Throughout the novel, everyone awaits a miracle—yet this hope is immediately undermined by the Kafka epigraph that opens the book: “In that case, while waiting for it, I shall lose it.” The novel was adapted into a unique film in 1994, in collaboration with director Béla Tarr.

American critic Susan Sontag soon hailed Krasznahorkai as “the contemporary master of the apocalypse.” This reputation was sealed with his second novel, “Az ellenállás melankóliája” (1989; *“The Melancholy of Resistance,” 1998). Here, tension intensifies amid grotesque events unfolding in a small Hungarian town in the Carpathian Basin. From the very first page, the reader—along with the disagreeable Mrs. Pflaum—is plunged into a dizzying state of emergency. Ominous signs are everywhere. At the center of the story stands a mysterious traveling circus, whose main “attraction” is the corpse of a giant whale. This eerie and unsettling spectacle sparks a wave of destruction and violence. The inability of the military to contain the chaos paves the way for a dictatorial coup. With dreamlike scenes and grotesque characters, László Krasznahorkai masterfully depicts the relentless struggle between order and chaos—from which no one can escape.

In “Háború és háború” (1999; *“War & War,” 2006), Krasznahorkai turns his gaze beyond Hungary’s borders. The humble archivist Korin, as the final act of his life, leaves the outskirts of Budapest for New York, longing to stand for a brief moment at the center of the world. In the archive, he has discovered an ancient epic of extraordinary beauty about heroes returning from battle and is determined to share it with the world. With this novel, Krasznahorkai’s prose fully crystallizes into his signature style—long, swirling, punctuation-free sentences that flow like a continuous current.