Stockholm – Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, renowned for his dark, apocalyptic vision and labyrinthine prose, was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, the Swedish Academy announced in Stockholm. The 71-year-old writer received the prestigious award “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art,” according to the official citation from the Nobel Committee.

Krasznahorkai becomes only the second Hungarian writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, joining Imre Kertész, who won in 2002. Long revered by fellow writers and critics, Krasznahorkai has been called a “master of the apocalypse” by the late Susan Sontag, a description that captures the essence of his literary universe—one characterized by philosophical depth, bleak humor, and an unflinching examination of civilizational collapse.

Steve Sem-Sandberg, a member of the Nobel Committee, praised Krasznahorkai’s “powerful, musically inspired epic style” during Thursday’s announcement. “It is Krasznahorkai’s artistic gaze, which is entirely free of illusion and which sees through the fragility of the social order, combined with his unwavering belief in the power of art that has motivated the academy to award the prize,” Sem-Sandberg said.

What sets Krasznahorkai apart is his distinctive literary technique—sentences that flow for pages without interruption, creating a hypnotic, almost musical rhythm that pulls readers into his dystopian worlds. His novel “Herscht 07769,” published in English in 2024, features only one period across its 400 pages. The book follows a graffiti cleaner in Germany who writes increasingly desperate letters to Chancellor Angela Merkel, warning her of the world’s impending destruction.

“I wanted to be free to stray far from my literary ancestors, and not make some new version of Kafka or Dostoyevsky or Faulkner,” Krasznahorkai told The New York Times in 2014. “I wanted to develop an absolutely original style.” This commitment to innovation has made his work simultaneously challenging and rewarding for readers willing to immerse themselves in his sprawling narratives.

Born in 1954 in Gyula, a small town about 120 miles from Budapest, Krasznahorkai grew up in Communist Hungary in a Jewish family. His father was a lawyer, and his mother worked in the social welfare ministry. After undertaking mandatory military service, he deserted the army following punishment for insubordination, according to interviews he has given. He subsequently took odd jobs, including playing piano in a jazz band, while studying Hungarian literature in Budapest.

Krasznahorkai’s literary breakthrough came with his 1985 debut novel, “Satantango,” about life in a poor hamlet. The book became a literary sensation in Hungary and was later adapted into a seven-hour film by director Béla Tarr in 1994. Tarr has been a crucial collaborator throughout Krasznahorkai’s career, adapting several of his works for the screen, including “The Melancholy of Resistance” (1989), which became the acclaimed film “Werckmeister Harmonies” in 2000.

“The Melancholy of Resistance,” filled with vast, sprawling sentences, concerns events in a small Hungarian town after a circus arrives with a huge stuffed whale in tow. Though published in Hungarian in 1989, it did not appear in English translation until 1998, highlighting the challenges of bringing Krasznahorkai’s complex prose to international audiences. The novel remains one of his best-known works and exemplifies his ability to blend the mundane with the surreal, creating narratives that feel both intimately local and universally apocalyptic.

In recent decades, Krasznahorkai has garnered increasing international acclaim beyond his native Hungary. In 2015, he won the Man Booker International Prize, which at that time was awarded for an author’s entire body of work rather than a single novel. Marina Warner, chair of that year’s judging panel, described him as “a visionary writer of extraordinary intensity and vocal range who captures the texture of present-day existence in scenes that are terrifying, strange, appallingly comic and often shatteringly beautiful.”

The Nobel Prize in Literature, first awarded in 1901, includes a monetary award of 11 million Swedish kronor, approximately $1 million. Krasznahorkai’s win continues the Nobel Committee’s recent trend of recognizing writers whose work grapples with historical trauma, political upheaval, and the darker aspects of the human condition. Last year’s prize was awarded to South Korean author Han Kang for her body of work that the committee said “confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

The literature prize is the fourth Nobel Prize announced this week, with awards in medicine, physics, and chemistry having been announced earlier. The Nobel Peace Prize and the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel will be announced in the coming days.