Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai wins 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature

Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, recognised for his distinctive voice in the Central European literary tradition and his profound reflections on art, beauty, and human endurance.

Krasznahorkai’s writing, known for its sprawling sentences and philosophical depth, draws on a lineage that connects Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard, weaving together absurdism, grotesque imagery, and existential inquiry. Beyond his European influences, his later works show a marked shift toward the East, inspired by his travels through China and Japan, where he developed a more meditative, poetic tone.

Among his most celebrated works is A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East (2022), a lyrical novel set near Kyoto that captures the quiet search for spiritual meaning. This work paved the way for Seiobo There Below (2013), widely regarded as his masterpiece. Structured according to the Fibonacci sequence, the collection explores the pursuit of beauty and the act of creation across time and cultures.

The opening story, featuring a motionless heron in Kyoto’s River Kamo, sets the tone for the entire book—a meditation on the artist’s isolation and the elusive nature of artistic insight. The recurring myth of Seiobo, a goddess who tends a garden bearing the fruit of immortality every three thousand years, serves as a metaphor for artistic transcendence.

Through stories of craftsmen, caretakers, and bystanders who orbit around great works of art, Krasznahorkai examines the mystery of creation itself. His intricate narratives, rich with patience and precision, invite readers to step through “side doors” into the silent process by which art—and meaning—come into being.

The Nobel Committee praised Krasznahorkai for his “epic vision and unrelenting exploration of the artist’s role in an impermanent world.”