KAFKAESQUE

Novelist Known for Writing About ‘Apocalyptic Terror’ Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

The committee chair called László Krasznahorkai “a great epic writer” in the tradition of other Central European luminaries.

A Hungarian novelist whose work “reaffirms the power of art” even in the midst of apocalyptic terror has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. László Krasznahorkai, 71, is known for his dense prose and dystopian themes. His work is influenced in part by his early years spent living under a repressive Communist regime, and has a relentless intensity that has led to comparisons to Gogol, Melville and Kafka. After his debut novel Sátántangó was published in 1985 to widespread acclaim, he left communist Hungary for the first time in 1987 and later traveled widely in Europe and east Asia. He lived for a time in Allen Ginsberg’s New York apartment and said the legendary Beat poet’s support was crucial to completing his 1999 novel War and War. Both Sátántangó and 1989’s The Melancholy of Resistance were later adapted into feature films by the Hungarian director Béla Tarr, 70, with whom Krasznahorkai has had a long creative partnership. In 2015, Krasznahorkai became the first Hungarian to be awarded the Man Booker International Prize. The author and screenwriter is “a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Franz Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess,” Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Committee, said in a statement.