Hungarian writer, Laszlo Krasznahorkai wins 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature

By Nehru Odeh

Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai has won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature. The literature award was announced by the Nobel Committee at the Swedish Academy on Thursday.

Krasznahorkai  best known for his 1985 novel ‘Satantango’ was given the award “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

The writer will receive a 11 million-krona ($1.2 million) award, the Swedish Academy said in a statement.

Satantango, a haunting, intricately structured novel, portrays a group of destitute people living in a decaying Hungarian village, before the fall of Soviet rule in Hungary. The people are led by Irimiás, a charismatic man long presumed dead, who suddenly returns under mysterious circumstances.

The book was adapted into a seven-hour film by Hungarian director Bela Tarr in 1994, regarded as one of the best arthouse films of all time.

Krasznahorkai’s dystopian works have won numerous prizes, including the 2019 National Book award for translated literature and the 2015 Man Booker International prize. Several of his works, including his novels Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been adapted into feature films.

Last year’s laureate was South Korean author Han Kang whose “intense poetic prose” engaged with themes of trauma and history, the Academy said. Recent winners include Svetlana Alexievich in 2015 for her novels that criticized political regimes in the Soviet Union and Belarus and author Toni Morrison in 1993 who wrote about difficult circumstances through the lens of American society.

In recent years, the academy has alternated between men and women in awarding the prize, with some notable female laureates including France’s Annie Ernaux, US’s Louise Glueck and Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk.

Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. A prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.

The 2025 laureates are announced through Oct. 13 in Stockholm, with the exception of the Nobel Peace Prize, whose recipients are selected on Friday by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.