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Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai
- animanoir 11mo ago[dead]
- wahnfrieden 11mo agoHe's my favorite working author! (Well, maybe that's Pynchon) I recommend not only his early works like Satantango but also his recent ones like Seiobo There Below (lucky to have a signed copy of this one). The short ones are interesting too. Animalinside (with Max Neumann), The Last Wolf. Interested in checking Chasing Homer which has musical accompaniment: "Publishers Weekly described the book as a cross between a Jean-Claude Van Damme film and the works of Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka"
- slibhb 11mo agoSeiobo There Below was really hard to get through. Earlier stuff is much less so.
- lanfeust6 11mo agoShould I start with Satantango?
- wahnfrieden 11mo agoSure, it's a fine place to start You might also try A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East as a very short one of his later works Wow I just found out that I have quite a valuable collection of his works - the surprisingly expensive ones that I had casually picked up when they were new: - The Last Wolf 1st edition, $300 - Satantango 1st edition, $200 - Music & Literature No. 2, unknown value (no record of secondary market resale) - AnimalInside, $300, only 2000 copies published Time to encase these in something...
- prinny_ 11mo agoΤhe melancholy of resistance is a book that shaped my understanding of conflict and apathy. I am happy this man got the Nobel, he is a tremendous writer.
- derbOac 11mo agoCan anyone comment on the translations of Krasznahorkai's works into English? Every time I read a translation of highly regarded literature I can't help but wonder if I'm getting some inadequate rendition that is missing something critical to why the originals are so highly regarded. This isn't meant to be a criticism of translators, just that I think their job is very difficult. Of course, I still happily read and enjoy translations; there's just this shadow cast for me all the time by the originals.
- seizethecheese 11mo agoHis works were in Hungarian. If we are being honest, he probably won the Nobel for his translated works as much as his originals. Or, how many Nobel committee members are fluent in Hungarian?
- kruffalon 11mo agoFor me this is todays new conceptual thought! Or something like this, just trying to express that I've never really thought about it like that. That we don't really interact with original works when we read/listen to translated works and thus we can't really say anything about the originals. Small mind blown moment!
- jaccarmac 11mo agoI'm biased because I lived down the street from a bookstore connected to a translation publishing house, but I can't recommend translated fiction enough for opening one's eyes to the weird relationship between a person, their language, and the works they read.
- SpicyUme 11mo agoThere is a bookstore in Vancouver with a section of translations which is reliably fruitful when I visit. The last book I bought there was a translation of Yuri Herrera's Season of the Swamp. I devoured it, even though I agree that I wish it were more fleshed out. It made me think about reading some of his work in Spanish even though it would be a long process for me. I enjoyed the effort in spanish literature class, maybe I can do it again. https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/season-swamp https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/season-swamp On the topic of the OP, I struggled with Satantango on more than one occasion over the last 12 years. For whatever reason I couldn't get through it, but I've carried the book around through several moves. Maybe I'll try again.
- more_corn 11mo agoCould have sworn the Nobel for fiction was going to go to RFK jr.
- BrtByte 11mo agoHis prose is like wading through a fever dream
- jelsisi 11mo agoJust a one sentence description? When all other categories this week got a detailed essay on what they discovered?
- haunter 11mo agoYou can't mention Krasznahorkai without Béla Tarr. Tarr's main filmography is basically Krasznahorkai's main bibliography: Damnation (1988), Sátántangó (1994), Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), The Man from London (2007), The Turin Horse (2011). I honestly say the films from Tarr are arguably the best book-to-film adaptations ever, especially Sátántangó, he is the master of literary filmmaking where the spirit of text comes across the screen perfectly.
- kkukshtel 11mo agoThey truly feel like a match made in heaven. Krasznahorkai's own writing is lovely and lyrical, and Tarr's interpretation of it projects the same ideas onto the films but also in a way that makes it stand distinct as a medium. I could watch this scene from Werckmeister Harmonies every day for the rest of my life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d5X2t_s9g8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d5X2t_s9g8 And The Turin Horse as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wPCkjN3n6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wPCkjN3n6s Think of some magical Tarr adaptation of Seiobo There Below...
- mrsvanwinkle 11mo agoThank you so much to you and original commenter for the passionate rec.
- wahnfrieden 11mo agoTry to see Tarr's movies on film. Except for the last couple that got Bluray releases there are only horrible quality DVDs available. But they come around on 35mm in cities like NY somewhat routinely. When Turin Horse came out I saw it at the NYFF (with an hour long talk in a small room with the director) and then another 3 times in theaters afterward. I've been lucky to catch Satantango and Werckmeister on film. Tarr also mentored a young Chinese director, Hu Bo. His two works are very good: An Elephant Sitting Still and Man in the Well. Tarr came out to TIFF to introduce and eulogize the latter with an impassioned speech. edit: Forgot that Criterion finally released a new edition of Werckmeister recently.
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- TheAceOfHearts 11mo agoI've never heard of them. Does anyone have a top suggestion for checking out his works or standout book? And for those of you that have read him, what did you get out the experience? Should I just read Satantango?
- jaccarmac 11mo agoI've loved all of the work I've read except Satantango, so if you bounce of that novel I would recommend the rest. That said, I started with the short story collection The World Goes On and thought it was brilliant.
- giraffe_lady 11mo agoSatantango or the melancholy of resistance are good places to start. His books aren't all the same but there are some qualities they all share. They're intricate, reference-heavy, postmodern novels with a lot of the emotional intensity purposely occulted behind the prose style. If you like Gass or Sebald you'll have fun.
- wahnfrieden 11mo agoHis recent works are also incredible and very different from the early works. Try Seiobo There Below. You can also appreciate him through his screenplay work on Bela Tarr's movies.
- giraffe_lady 11mo agoOh good to know, I actually haven't read anything of his since war and war. Not for any particular reason, just there are a lot of books.
- wahnfrieden 11mo agoI also recommend the illustrated novella AnimalInside but you'll need to find a PDF, just found out only 2000 were printed and my copy goes for $300 now :0 Do you have a GoodReads that you'd share?
- redbell 11mo agoA little bit of history.. In 1974, The Swedish Academy was heavily criticized for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to two of its own members. One laureate, Harry Martinson, was so shaken by the backlash he committed suicide 4 years later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Martinson#Later_life_and_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Martinson#Later_life_and...
- b2ccb2 11mo agoI am a bit confused as to why he was chosen. Not to diminish his tremendous body of work, but rather by the definition of the rules laid down by Alfred Nobel in his will: "All of my remaining realisable assets are to be disbursed as follows: the capital, converted to safe securities by my executors, is to constitute a fund, the interest on which is to be distributed annually as prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind … one part to the person who, in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an ideal direction;" Has anyone any insight on this? https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/full-text-of-alfred-nobels-will-2/ https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/full-text-of-alfred-...
- pavlov 11mo agoThe Nobel Prize in all fields has become an award for lifetime achievement, even though the wording of Nobel's will could also be interpreted as meaning that it should be awarded for work that had the greatest impact during the preceding year.
- simonh 11mo agoI don't know, but I suspect the interpretation is that the impact should be during the preceding year, the wording doesn't say the work has to occur in the preceding year. So arguably the work could have been decades ago, but if the impact has only recently become apparent that counts. I think that's fine. Often it's not really possible to assess the impact of a contribution until long after, it takes a lot of context to be able to do that.
- justonceokay 11mo agoI don’t think we should consider too strictly the intention of someone who has been dead for 130 years.
- kzrdude 11mo agoStrangely enough though, there is a conflict around the foundation managing Hilma af Klint's art collection and they are now trying to change how the works are displayed and loaned based on stricter interpretations of her words.
- krasznahorkai 11mo agoI knew it would happen eventually! I've been waiting for his award. Long time fan. My favorite is War and War (Háború és háború) because the confusion of the world and the endless struggle of trying to be understood represented so well.
- kome 11mo ago[flagged]
- gjm11 11mo agoThere's some prior art for important books involving a weird obsession with whales.
- DiggyJohnson 11mo agowhat's wrong with obsessing about whales?
- kome 11mo ago[dead]
- zpeti 11mo agoConsidering the amount of threats and hate jewish people with no connection get about Israel vs Palestine, you don't think there's at least some legitimacy for his position? Considering there was literally just an attack on a UK synagogue by an arab, after which many people protested on the side of the attacker in London, you don't think there's a tiny legitimacy to his views? Of course this is a rhetorical question, because your obviously don't think his views has legitimacy.
- OskarS 11mo agoYour argument is that it’s not ok to think of all Jewish people as a monolithic group, and therefore his statement where he considered all arabs as a monolithic group is ”legitimate”? Seriously? Just like it’s not ok to see all jews as part of the same murderous conspiracy, it’s not ok to see all arabs as part of one either.
- cool_dude85 11mo agoCan you give some info on people "protesting on the side of the attacker in London"? That is, people coming out in support of the attack on the synagogue?
- Maro 11mo agoWe're on fire! 2025 - László Krasznahorkai - Literature - for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art. 2023 - Katalin Karikó - Physiology or Medicine - for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. 2023 - Ferenc Krausz - Physics - for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter. To be fair, there are only 2 others since 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hungarian_Nobel_laureates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hungarian_Nobel_laurea...
- mihaaly 11mo agoIt is difficult to say 'we' here for me, when the common ground with these remarkable people are only the country of origin and most of the time the language spoken. Also when it is based on achievements that are mostly theirs, which I have nothing to do with. I am glad that these people could achive so much coming from a place like Hungary, that is providing inadequate possibilities for these kinds of achivements so they reach it in other countries too many times. Or sometimes even put obstacles in their ways - which is actually good/ok in the end as they seek out the places allowing their success. But I am glad for any Nobel price winners, regardless of their origins. They give us so much.
- Maro 11mo agoFerenc Krausz has almost the same degrees as me: ELTE Physics, BME EEng/Comp.Sci. Katalin Karikó went to the same University as my sister (Szeged). But yes, we have to leave the country if we want good opportunities.. unless we go into politics! Fidesz is easily the most successful startup in Hungary after 1989, possibly in Europe; Fidesz' CEO is one of the richest men in Europe.. unfortunately at our expense.
- spicymaki 11mo agoAgreed, I do understand the sentiment of when someone of your tribe does something great you feel great sentiment, but it can lead to zero sum thinking which is counterproductive. I am pleased that every year we celebrate the achievements of humanity.