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The coveted Nobel Prize in Literature for this year has been granted to the Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, as announced by the committee.

The Academy commended the 71-year-old's "compelling and visionary oeuvre that, amidst cataclysmic fear, reasserts the power of the arts."

An Esteemed Career of Dystopian Fiction

Krasznahorkai is celebrated for his dystopian, pensive books, which have garnered numerous awards, for instance the 2019 National Book Award for literature in translation and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize.

A number of of his works, including his novels Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been made into cinematic works.

Early Beginnings

Hailing in a Hungarian locale in 1954, Krasznahorkai first rose to prominence with his 1985 initial work Satantango, a bleak and mesmerising portrayal of a failing countryside settlement.

The novel would eventually win the Man Booker International Prize honor in English nearly three decades later, in 2013.

A Distinctive Prose Technique

Commonly referred to as postmodern, Krasznahorkai is known for his lengthy, intricate prose (the twelve chapters of Satantango each are a solitary block of text), apocalyptic and melancholic motifs, and the kind of persistent intensity that has led literary experts to compare him to Kafka, Melville, and Gogol.

Satantango was notably made into a seven-hour film by filmmaker Béla Tarr, with whom Krasznahorkai has had a long creative partnership.

"The author is a remarkable writer of epic tales in the central European literary tradition that extends through Kafka to Bernhard, and is characterised by absurdism and grotesque exaggeration," stated the committee chair, head of the Nobel panel.

He portrayed Krasznahorkai’s prose as having "developed towards … smooth syntax with extended, meandering lines without periods that has become his trademark."

Critical Acclaim

The critic Susan Sontag has described the author as "today's Hungarian master of end-times," while the writer W.G. Sebald praised the wide appeal of his outlook.

Only a few of Krasznahorkai’s works have been translated into English. The critic James Wood once wrote that his books "get passed around like rare currency."

Worldwide Travels

Krasznahorkai’s professional journey has been influenced by journeys as much as by language. He first departed from the communist the country in 1987, spending a period in the city for a fellowship, and later found inspiration from east Asia – particularly Mongolia and China – for books such as one of his titles, and his book on China.

While developing War and War, he journeyed extensively across European nations and lived for a time in Allen Ginsberg’s New York apartment, noting the famous writer's assistance as essential to finishing the novel.

Writer's Own Words

Inquired how he would characterize his work in an discussion, Krasznahorkai responded: "Characters; then from letters, vocabulary; then from these words, some brief phrases; then more sentences that are more extended, and in the chief extremely lengthy paragraphs, for the span of three and a half decades. Beauty in language. Fun in darkness."

On readers finding his writing for the first time, he noted: "If there are readers who haven’t read my works, I couldn’t recommend any specific title to explore to them; instead, I’d suggest them to go out, settle at a location, perhaps by the banks of a creek, with nothing to do, nothing to think about, just remaining in tranquility like boulders. They will in time encounter a person who has encountered my works."

Nobel Prize Context

Before the announcement, betting agencies had pegged the top contenders for this year's award as the Chinese writer, an innovative Chinese author, and Krasznahorkai.

The Nobel Award in Literature has been presented on 117 prior instances since 1901. Recent laureates have included the French author, the musician, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Louise Glück, Handke and Olga Tokarczuk. The most recent honoree was Han Kang, the South Korean writer best known for The Vegetarian.

Krasznahorkai will formally receive the medal and diploma in a ceremony in the month of December in Stockholm, Sweden.

Additional details forthcoming