What did László Krasznahorkai write that won him the Nobel Prize in Literature?

László Krasznahorkai's literary legacy is a long journey through darkness, where each work echoes the loneliness of humanity.

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai - Photo: BBC

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to László Krasznahorkai , a Hungarian writer known as the “Kafka of the post-Soviet era”. For him, literature is not about telling stories, but about illuminating the devastation of humanity in the face of a ruined world .

From Satan's Dance to War and War , each of Krasznahorkai's works is a dark labyrinth where lost souls struggle to find a glimmer of light.

Born in 1954, László Krasznahorkai quickly made his mark with his endless language, his seemingly endless sentences, a style that either draws readers in or forces them to give up halfway through.

But it was that writing style that helped him shape a separate, unmistakable "literary universe".

Let's take a look at some of László Krasznahorkai's works:

Satan's Dance , the Beginning of the Ruined World  

Released in 1985, Sátántangó (Satan's Dance) tells the story of a poor village where farmers are left stranded in the middle of an endless muddy rain.

Satan's Dance

They live in anticipation of a "savior" returning, only to find out it was all a hoax.

László Krasznahorkai constructs the work with interwoven chapters, recreating the vicious cycle of hope and betrayal.

The despair here is not fierce but smoldering, quiet, like the rhythm of life after the Soviet period.

The novel was later adapted by director Béla Tarr into a film of more than seven hours, one of the great milestones of world art cinema.

The Melancholy of Resistance, Symphony of Chaos

The Melancholy of Resistance

The Melancholy of Resistance, released in 1989, opens with a small town shaken by the arrival of a traveling circus and a giant whale.

In those suffocating days, faith, religion and power gradually collapsed, people revealed their darkest instincts.

László Krasznahorkai depicts chaos not with action, but with long flowing prose, drawing the reader into the endless trance of out-of-control minds.

The film Werckmeister Harmonies, later adapted from this work, became a monument of European cinema.

War and war , the obsession of existence

War and war

Written while living in exile in Berlin, War and War (1999) follows Korin, a poor clerk haunted by an ancient manuscript.

Believing that the text contained the truth of humanity, he decided to post it on the Internet before taking his own life.

This seemingly bizarre story reveals a deep fear about the disappearance of knowledge and faith in modern times.

This is also one of two works that has been translated into Vietnamese with the title War and War (Writers Association Publishing House, 2017).

Seiobo There Below and Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming : Beauty and Return

In Seiobo There Below (2008), László Krasznahorkai expands his world beyond Europe, letting beauty take center stage.

Seiobo There Below and Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming

Each chapter is a piece about artists, monks, or wanderers, people who search for absolute beauty in a world that is no longer sacred.

Meanwhile, Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming (2016) is the sad triumph of his career.

An aging aristocrat returns to his homeland after years of exile, hoping for forgiveness and love, but finding only emptiness. This work won László Krasznahorkai the 2019 National Book Award.

The world goes on, as people are lost in the flow of time

After labyrinthine novels, László Krasznahorkai experiments with the short story form in The World Goes On (2013).

The work was shortlisted for the 2018 International Booker Prize.

Consisting of 21 short stories, the book depicts people drifting between the modern world, where time and memory become one, where language is both salvation and prison.

Each story is like a fragmented puzzle: a man lost in a strange city, a man searching for meaning in life amid the ruins, a narrator standing before a disappearing world.

Despite their different backgrounds, they all share the same feeling: the world keeps going, despite all human efforts to understand or change it.

The World Goes On was one of the works that brought László Krasznahorkai to a wider Western audience, helping to cement his reputation as the "Kafka of the post-Soviet era".

The beast within, the echo of instinct

In 2010, László Krasznahorkai collaborated with German artist Max Neumann on the project Animalinside .

This is a rare work that blends literature and painting, carrying a strong existential philosophical spirit.

Each of Neumann's paintings is dialogued by a text by László Krasznahorkai, the voice of the "beast" symbolizing the repressed instinctual part of man.

The Beast Within does not tell a specific story, but is the cry of consciousness, of the fear of being erased from the world, an obsession that runs through the entire career of the Hungarian writer.

The Paris Review commented: "Krasznahorkai makes the reader feel that the beast is not far away, but is stirring within us."

László Krasznahorkai's literature is often described as "stream of consciousness in a state of apocalypse".

His long, unbroken sentences force the reader to follow him through his maze of thoughts. Writer Susan Sontag once said: "No one writes like László Krasznahorkai; he makes the world terrifying and yet heartbreakingly beautiful."

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature is therefore a recognition of a lonely but persistent journey, where the Hungarian writer uses darkness to illuminate the meaning of human existence.

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Source: https://tuoitre.vn/laszlo-krasznahorkai-da-viet-nhung-gi-ma-chinh-phuc-duoc-nobel-van-chuong-20251012121442296.htm