Noble Prize 2025 For Literature : Hungarian Author Laszlo Krasznahorkai Bags It For His Book Herscht 07769′

His book, ‘Herscht 07769’, has been described as a great contemporary German novel, on account of its accuracy in portraying the country’s social unrest.

“In ‘Herscht 07769’ we find ourselves in not a feverish nightmare in the Carpathians but rather a credible portrayal of a contemporary small town in Thringen, Germany, which is nevertheless also afflicted by social anarchy, murder and arson. At the same time, the terror of the novel plays out against the backdrop of Johann Sebastian Bach’s powerful legacy. It is a book, written in a single breath, about violence and beauty ‘impossibly’ conjoined,” says the Nobel Academy.

Lszl Krasznahorkai was born in 1954 in the small town of Gyula in southeast Hungary, near the Romanian border.

A similar remote rural area is the scene of Krasznahorkai’s first novel Satantango, published in 1985 (Satantango, 2012), which was a literary sensation in Hungary.

Krasznahorkai is a great epic writer in the Central European tradition, which extends from Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterised by absurdism and grotesque excess, the Swedish Academy said in its announcement.

He drew inspiration from Asia — particularly Mongolia and China — for books like The Prisoner of Urga, and Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens.