The Nobel Committee announced Thursday that 71-year-old Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai has won the 2025 Nobel Prize in literature. He is known for postmodern and apocalyptic novels and novellas like Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance.
In a statement, the committee says it is honoring Krasznahorkai "for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art."
"I am deeply glad that I have received the Nobel Prize — above all because this award proves that literature exists in itself, beyond various non-literary expectations, and that it is still being read," Krasznahorkai said in a statement through his literary agency RCW.
Satantango, Krasznahorkai's first novel, came out in 1985. It's about a pair of swindlers and a nearly abandoned collective farm. The book was made into a seven-hour movie in 1994. And The Melancholy of Resistance is about a strange, ghostly circus appearing in a small town with a giant, dead stuffed whale.
Literature, Krasznahorkai continued, "offers a certain hope that beauty, nobility, and the sublime still exist for their own sake. It may offer hope even to those in whom life itself only barely flickers. Trust — even if there seems to be no reason to."
The Nobel Prize, awarded since 1901, is today worth $1.2 million. Past winners include Doris Lessing, Bob Dylan, Alice Munro and Derek Walcott.
Meghan Sullivan edited this story for radio and the web.
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