Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai | Hacker News Reader

Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai

nobelprize.org

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You 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.

They 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

And The Turin Horse as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wPCkjN3n6s

Think of some magical Tarr adaptation of Seiobo There Below...

> Krasznahorkai's own writing is lovely and lyrical

I would describe his writing style as relentlessly oppressive, and hypnotic.

Thank you so much to you and original commenter for the passionate rec.

Try 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.

It is not easy to commit seven hours to a single movie; for me, Sátántangó was worth it. Warm up on Werckmeister Harmonies which is a short two hours since Bela Tarr isn't and doesn't need to be for everyone. That said, Sátántangó is in my top four movies of all time because of how well it reflects humanity and how much it says about how we interact with each other. (The cows are a metaphor for HN, obviously.)

Yes, Sátántangó is quite the experience. Seven hour investment for one film, and I actually want to do it again.

Try Out 1: Noli Me Tangere at 14 hours

Satantango was screened with a full dinner break in the middle (long enough to see another movie in the interim) when I saw it, but this one I went to had to be spread out over two days

Same here. I’ve been dedicating New Year’s Day to a long movie for a few years now —- Trenque Lauquen last year —- and the habit is working out quite well.

I've loved those novels of his that I've read, particularly War & War, and haven't watched a single one of those films. Krasznahorkai's work stands on its own perfectly fine.

You shouldn't dismiss them - they are not only adaptations, their screenplays were written by Krasznahorkai and he collaborated with their production.

Turin Horse is an original work by Krasznahorkai without being an adaptation, too. (I've seen that one 7 or 8 times, 4 during its festival & cinema run.)

To dismiss them would be like to dismiss his works with Max Neumann (AnimalInside being one of his best!) because they combine writing with painting instead of being pure literature.

oh wow, i sense a bojler elado, here.

In a similar vein, the novelist/film maker collaboration between Kobo Abe and Hiroshi Teshigahara was very fruitful, and produced some beautiful films.

Tarr and Krasznahorkai are basically artistic soulmates

  > 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.

If that is so, then these are books that you read to experience ultimate ennui?

I know the films, I've watched them all, but doing e.g. Satantango in book form sounds not so enticing?

"Doing Satantango in book form?" The book is the original.

>Sátántangó

>Running time: ~8 hours

Yeah, I'll pass.

Ironically, I think Sátántangó might be one of Kraznahorkai’s shortest novels.

How many Netflix series have you ever binged?

I don't know, a couple.

What does that have to do with this?

same investment, or less

I 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.

Can 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.

His 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?

For 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!

I'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.

There 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

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.

I commented elsewhere: Satantango is easily my least favorite LK so far. If you want to try something else, I would recommend The Melancholy of Resistance as a novel with similar concerns but better execution, War & War as a metafictional odyssey, or the short stories.

The Hungarian poet George Szirtes, with no prior translation experience, translated his first two novels, over a period of many years. I can’t speak Hungarian, but both the Melancholy of Resistance and Satantango remain my favourite novels of his, and I think I can partially attribute that to Szirtes‘s translations.

Something is always lost in a translation, but I always advise everyone to read the reviews of available translations of any foreign book they are planning to read. The quality of translations varies wildly.

One of the biggest things is that there are lots of old public domain translations of popular works, but the translations are very outdated. They rank higher in Amazon because either they are cheaper, or their publishers use their power to rank them higher because they are making a bigger profit. The new translations of Les Misérables are superior, but the one that is pushed highest is the 100 year old translation that is the "official" version that the (excellent) popular musical have put their stamp of approval (and poster) onto.

In the early 1900s a bunch of the big Russian works were translated to english. If you read about career translators competing to get the "best" ones you really get disenchanted with translated works.

As pieces on their own they are great, but how close are they to the original? Like some translations are garbage others are amazing so how much of the original spirit is intact.

I 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-...

The Nobel Prize hasn't been a prize for work done in the previous year in a long time. This originates in the science prizes because some prizes were given to discoveries that were later discredited. But even the literature prize is generally given in honor of a body of work. And if you look at the list on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Lit...), even those who are cited for a particular work (which was mostly in the first half of the 20th century) didn't get the prize for some time after that work. I suspect there was the same idea that the work needed to be one recognized to have lasting literary value.

In Krasznahorkai's case, it's pretty clear they're recognizing the sustained impact and distinctiveness of his entire body of work

The 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.

I 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.

I don’t think we should consider too strictly the intention of someone who has been dead for 130 years.

Strangely 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.

This is a sensible and reasonable proposition, which is ironic considering the USA is run based on interpretations of intentions of slave owners or those copacetic with slavery who have been dead for almost twice as long.

France has had something like 16 constitutions since 1791. I think I’ll take the US model.

Which has 27 merged PRs in its git repository.

Which is basically a cut-and-paste of the British constitutional model of the 1780s, but with an elected King George III and upper house. Presidents are just elected kings. The modern parliamentary model is much better.

This is a pretty common model for countries which became independent of the UK; Ireland did more or less the same copy-paste job, but in the 1920s, so ended up with a _way_ weaker president than in the US model (the Irish presidency is more or less a standin for a constitutional monarch, with ~no real powers) and upper house, and stronger lower house.

Good point, and I think the fact that most commonwealth countries adopted more recent and therefore more modern iterations of the british model is a good thing.

In comparison the US system seems hopelessly outdated, and even riven with the many of the same problems we had during the George III mad king era, except we managed to move on.

Sure, stick to the Model T, why not. It had wheels and seats, so there's that.

Conveniently those interpretations can be whatever suits the current lifetime-appointed guardians of the sacred legal text. It helps that the text is old and originally ambiguous.

When Napoleon seized power in 1799, he crafted a French constitution that he wanted to be “short and obscure”, the better to enable his authoritarian power. The United States has ended in the same place.

> When Napoleon seized power in 1799, he crafted a French constitution that he wanted to be “short and obscure”, the better to enable his authoritarian power. The United States has ended in the same place.

What is “obscure” in the US constitution?

The first amendment is the one thing that makes it impossible for authoritarian US to be reality.

Authoritarian US is becoming the reality right now and the first amendment provides exactly zero protection. We are watching US constitution collapse right now.

Second, its meaning IS obscure. It get reinterpreted and modified by supreme court to unrecognizable degree. The words dont mean what they used to mean back then, because court used some alternative history to achieve their political goal. It is also not like the court was grounded in contemporary reality when making those decisions and explaining them.

Most of constitutional protections are weak. There is no recourse if your rights are broken, only ever increasing maze of special conditions and requirements you need to fill if you want those protections to apply.

> Authoritarian US is becoming the reality right now and the first amendment provides exactly zero protection.

Well, this is not true. As a matter of fact, you can talk about it without fear that you would be arrested for your speech. In real authoritarian regimes, e.g., Jordan, Qatar, China, Russia (de jure protections exist, de facto not so much) you have no protections at all. In those places speaking out means you end up in jail.

> We are watching US constitution collapse right now.

Can you give an example?

> Second, its meaning IS obscure. It get reinterpreted and modified by supreme court to unrecognizable degree.

What article do you think was interpreted to unrecognizable degree?

> The words dont mean what they used to mean back then, because court used some alternative history to achieve their political goal.

Can you provide an example for that as well?

> It is also not like the court was grounded in contemporary reality when making those decisions and explaining them.

I think this is the case with all the precedent-based judicial systems, no?

> Most of constitutional protections are weak. There is no recourse if your rights are broken, only ever increasing maze of special conditions and requirements you need to fill if you want those protections to apply.

In order to argue about that you would have to be specific. It seems to me that the constitutional protections are the only ones that actually work, e.g., 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th amendments are really powerful, and go without saying.

> Can you give an example?

I mean, ol' minihands is certainly _trying_ to erode the first amendment. Now the question is whether the courts will let him.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/us/politics/trump-freedom...

Off-topic, but reading that will is a fascinating study in 19th-century international economics: In the initial outlays, I count 5 different currencies (crowns, francs, florins, dollars, marks). I don't think anyone now would bequest cash in anything other than their native currency (to be converted by the heir).

I don't see a requirement that the work was created or released during the preceding year, only that it conferred benefit to humankind during that time. Presumably the argument is that Nobel-worthy acts continue to confer benefit for long periods.

That's not the basis the award is decided on, I presume it may have been in the early years of the award, but generally it's given as a lifetime achievement kind of thing - the recipients are often decades removed from their most influential work.

I'm curious about the moral underlying an objection like this. Why do you care about whether the prize exactly reflects his will? And why specifically for this prize, when your objection has applied for most of a century across every field?

It was a genuine question, I have no objections. I am rather illiterate about the Nobel Prize, it just caught my attention this year. I just noticed a discrepancy after checking the body of his work after reading the will. That's all.

There's actually a second issue with the Literature prize, which is that it's supposed to be given for work "in an idealistic direction", but nobody knows what that means.

And since the literature committee tends to be run by extremely pretentious artists they don't like idealism anyway. Artists are supposed to be tortured postmodern souls you know.

A lot of people want Haruki Murakami to get the prize, but I don't think his work would pass this.

Τhe 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.

We'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_laurea...

It 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.

Ferenc 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.

Agreed, 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.

It can also lead to healthy competition.

Hungary is a relatively small country, so that's quite impressive!

"The Atomic Bomb Considered As Hungarian High School Science Fair Project"

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-consid...

This was one of the most fascinating things I've read all year. Thank you for posting

He'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"

Seiobo There Below was really hard to get through. Earlier stuff is much less so.

Should I start with Satantango?

Sure, 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...

Just a one sentence description? When all other categories this week got a detailed essay on what they discovered?

If it's Krasznahorkai we're talking about, one sentence could be very long indeed.

He got the biography too https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2025/bio-biblio...

I'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?

Satantango 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.

His 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.

Oh 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.

I 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?

I'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.

Could have sworn the Nobel for fiction was going to go to RFK jr.

His prose is like wading through a fever dream

A 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...

That has absolutely nothing to do with this article.

That's sad. It says post humusly he was celebrated as the greatest writer after August someone.

But what's the point, he was gone .-.

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