Hungarian novelist wins 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature

At 6:00 p.m. on October 9 (Vietnam time), the Swedish Academy announced the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature to Hungarian novelist and screenwriter László Krasznahorkai "for a body of compelling and visionary writing that, amid the horrors of the apocalypse, has affirmed the power of art."

Novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, UK on May 19, 2015. Photo: The Independent/TTXVN

Works by 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Photo: REUTERS/TTXVN

The winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature is Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, who was honored for a body of compelling and visionary writing that has affirmed the value of art amid apocalyptic chaos.

The Swedish Academy's statement called Krasznahorkai a great epic writer of Central Europe, continuing the tradition from authors such as Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, characterized by absurdist writing, full of satire and whimsy. His talent is also expressed through a contemplative, refined and deep Eastern style. Krasznahorkai is one of Hungary's most famous writers with many outstanding novels, considered a strong candidate for the annual Nobel Prize in Literature.

Krasznahorkai was born in 1954 in the small town of Gyula in southeastern Hungary, near the Romanian border. His first novel, “Satantango”, published in 1985 and set in this remote countryside, immediately created a “literary shock” in Hungary. The work was adapted into a seven-hour epic film by director Béla Tarr, opening the collaboration between two great names in Hungarian art. His second novel, “The Melancholy of Resistance”, published in 1989, was hailed by American critic Susan Sontag as the work of “an apocalyptic master” of contemporary literature. László Krasznahorkai's surreal, powerful novel, which depicts a series of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town, won Germany's Bestenliste prize for best literary work of 1993.

In 2015, Krasznahorkai became the first Hungarian writer to win the 2015 Man Booker International Prize, with the Jury describing Krasznahorkai's work as "a marvel of profound imagination and complex emotion, in which humour and pain blend together masterfully".

The Nobel Prize in Literature is the fourth prize to be announced in the 2025 Nobel Prize season and the 118th Nobel Prize in Literature since 1901. Last year, female writer Han Kang became the first Korean writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and the 18th woman to win the prestigious award.

The winners of this year's Nobel Prizes will be awarded cash prizes totaling 11 million Swedish kronor (nearly 1.2 million USD)./.

Source: https://baoquangninh.vn/tieu-thuet-gia-nguoi-hungary-gianh-giai-nobel-van-hoc-2025-3379423.html