Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasnahorkai was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel Committee specifically recognized his "impressive legacy, which once again proved the incomparable power of art even in times of apocalyptic mood and anxiety."
In the prose of Krasnahorkai, known as a major epic pen of Central Europe, relying on the traditions of Kafka and Thomas Bernhard, the boundaries of absurdity and grotesque expanded. However, when he looks at the East, he transitions to a thoughtful, gentle tone - this gives a different color to his literary world.
Born in 1954 in Dyula, near the Romanian border, the writer caused a stir in Hungarian literature with his debut novel of 1985 - "The Devil's Tango." This work about the life of a remote area was later adapted by Belo Tarr as a seven-hour film epic - the fruitful creative partnership between the writer and director is still mentioned.
In 2015, Krasnahorkai was awarded the Man Booker International prize - the judges noted the intense intensity and skillful use of language in his prose. Among his other notable works are "The Melancholy of Resistance" (1989), "War and War" (1999), and "Si-van-mu Among Us" (2008).
The writer's work expanded further under the influence of travels: in 1987, he left communist Hungary and lived in West Berlin on a scholarship; his subsequent trip to Mongolia and China inspired texts such as "The Prisoner of Urgi" and "Ruins and Sorrows Under the Sky." While working on "War and War," he recalled living at Allen Ginsberg's house in New York, where the poet's support was decisive in completing the novel.
The Nobel week schedule is also known: on October 6 - winners in physiology and medicine, on October 7 - in physics, on October 8 - in chemistry were announced; the Peace Prize will be announced on October 10, and in economic sciences on October 13. The award ceremony will traditionally take place on December 10 in Stockholm.
What does Krasnakhorka's award mean to the reader? Central European prose, swaying between darkness and hope, has returned to the center, and the sensitive tone that listens to the East is being heard even more vividly on the global literary stage. This means that in the near future, there will be a reason for new translations and a big conversation for the Uzbek reader.
Read “Zamin” on Telegram!
