László Krasznahorkai

László Krasznahorkai (born January 5, 1954, Gyula, Hungary) is a Hungarian novelist and screenwriter known for postmodern works that explore absurdist, dystopian themes and employ long, labyrinthine sentences that wind through hundreds of pages. In 2025 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature and was cited by the Nobel committee “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.” Many of Krasznahorkai’s works have been adapted to film, notably by Hungarian producer and director Béla Tarr.

In a 2015 interview with The Guardian, Krasznahorkai was asked to describe his work: “Letters; then from letters, words; then from these words, some short sentences; then more sentences that are longer, and in the main very long sentences, for the duration of 35 years. Beauty in language. Fun in hell.”

Early life and years of wandering

Krasznahorkai was born into a middle-class family in Gyula, Hungary, a small town near the border of Romania. His father, György Krasznahorkai, was a lawyer. His mother, Júlia Pálinkás, was a government administrator. Krasznahorkai was unaware of his father’s Jewish roots until he was 11 years old; as he told The Paris Review in 2018, “In [Hungary’s] socialist era, it was forbidden to mention it.”

As a child, Krasznahorkai discovered the works of Franz Kafka, whom he credits for sparking his interest in both writing and law. “I wanted to deal with criminal psychology,” he told The Paris Review. However, before his law studies, he began mandatory military service, although he deferred his second year of service until he received an exemption for having children. Krasznahorkai then studied at the József Attila University (now the University of Szeged) until 1978. He went on to study philology and Hungarian literature at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, writing his thesis on Hungarian writer and poet Sándor Márai and receiving his degree in 1983.

In the 1980s Krasznahorkai spent many years wandering Hungary and Germany, working odd jobs such as a miner and a night watchman of cows. He also played piano in a jazz band and worked as an editor. These picaresque experiences would find their way into many of his novels. Later his travels took him to Mongolia, China, and Japan, whose cultures he has also explored in his works.

Novels and short stories

Krasznahorkai published his first novel, Sátántangó, in 1985 (Eng. trans. Satantango). Set in Hungary before the fall of communism, it portrays the disturbing interpersonal and political dynamics in a failing rural community. He followed up in 1989 with Az ellenállás melankóliája (The Melancholy of Resistance), in which a small Hungarian town collapses into anarchy. The novel’s many grotesque scenes include the arrival of a circus with a giant whale carcass among its attractions. It was awarded the German Bestenliste Prize for best book of the year. It also led to American writer Susan Sontag anointing Krasznahorkai a “master of the apocalypse.”

In 1999 he published Háború és háború (War & War), which centers on an archivist named Korin (Krasznahorkai’s father’s original family name) who discovers a mysterious manuscript after returning to Budapest after many years living in New York City. While researching the novel, Krasznahorkai lived in New York with American poet Allen Ginsberg, whom he credits for helping him to develop “a very neutral New York City” for the book. He told Guernica in 2012, “The hero is very eccentric and his story is, too, so I needed a neutral city instead of the real one, a New York without colors, without the unexpectedness, without motion.”

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Krasznahorkai’s experiences in East Asia inspired his next few works. Északról hegy, Délről tó, Nyugatról utak, Keletről folyó (2003; A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East) is set in Japan, near Kyōto, and his collection of short stories Seiobo járt odalent (2008; Seiobo There Below) draws on Japanese myths, including that of the goddess Seiobo.

In Herscht 07769: Florian Herscht Bach-regénye (2021; Herscht 07769: A Novel), Krasznahorkai returns to themes of social disorder, in a tale about a graffiti cleaner named Herscht who attempts to warn German Chancellor Angela Merkel of an upcoming apocalypse. According to The New York Times, the 400-page novel features just one period.

Screenplays

In 1994 Satantango was made into a seven-hour film by Tarr, who collaborated with Krasznahorkai on writing the screenplay. They also worked together on adapting The Melancholy of Resistance into a film titled Werckmeister harmóniák (2000; Werckmeister Harmonies), which was directed by Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky. Krasznahorkai’s other screenwriting credits include the Tarr-directed films Kárhozat (1988; Damnation), A londoni férfi (2007; The Man from London), and A torinói ló (2011; The Turin Horse), the latter two of which were codirected by Hranitzky.

Additional honors

Krasznahorkai’s other honors include the 2015 Man Booker International Prize, which was awarded to him for his entire oeuvre rather than for an individual work.