The Hungarian author receives the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his visionary and powerful writing which, amidst the horror of fate, maintains faith in the possibilities of art.”
László Krasznahorkai is published in Sweden by Norstedts förlag. Born in 1954, the Hungarian author has achieved great international success since the 1980s with his quirky novels and film collaborations with director Béla Tarr: “Several critics and fellow writers consider him a legitimate heir to W. G. Sebald and Thomas Bernhard.”
The novels The Melancholy of Resistance (in Swedish, 2014), Satantango (2015), Seiobo där nere (2017), Den sista vargen (2020), and Herscht 07769 (2023) are available in Swedish, all translated by Daniel Gustafsson.
This fall, a dramatization of the novel The Melancholy of Resistance, adapted and directed by Ulla Kassius, is being performed at Dramaten in Stockholm.
He was previously awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2015.
The Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, Mats Malm, contacted László Krasznahorkai by phone before the announcement:
– When I called him today, he was in Frankfurt on a private trip. He promised to be in Stockholm in December. We’ve also had time to discuss other practical matters.
The chairman of the Swedish Academy’s Nobel Committee, Anders Olsson, was unable to attend today’s announcement. However, in a biography, he describes László Krasznahorkai as “a great epic poet of the Central European tradition, from Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, characterized by absurdity and the excesses of the grotesque,” strongly inspired by his travels to China and Japan.
László Krasznahorkai was born in 1954 in the small town of Gyula, in southeastern Hungary.
He debuted in 1985 with Satantango, which has been called “a modern classic.”
Since the 1980s, he has achieved international success with independent novels and film collaborations.
In Swedish, Norstedts förlag publishes the novels Motståndets melankoli (in Swedish 2014), Satantango (2015) and Seiobo där nere (2017), Den sista vargen (2020) and Herscht 07769 (2023).
