Hungary’s László Krasznahorkai will receive this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy announced Thursday.
Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Krasznahorkai won the award “for his compelling and visionary work” which “affirms the power of art” “in the midst of apocalyptic terror”.
The 71-year-old novelist and screenwriter is famous for his postmodern and sometimes dystopian depictions of Hungary’s small towns. He has adapted several of his novels, including devil tango And sadness of resistance, In award winning films.
This award is considered to be the most prestigious honor a writer can receive in his career. Krasznahorkai has been regularly considered the favorite to win for the past decade.
Fame and travel
Born in Gyula in 1954, he studied literature at Budapest University. He first left communist Hungary for West Berlin in 1987 on a DAAD fellowship, and later returned to Germany for a semester as a visiting professor at the Free University of Berlin.
anus devil tangoHis first novel, published in 1985, immediately made him one of Hungary’s best-known writers.
After the fall of communism he traveled extensively in China, leading to his acclaimed travel memoir Destruction and sorrow under heaven.
Despite his fame and numerous national and international awards, in recent years Krasznahorkai has kept a low profile at his home in the Hungarian countryside.
He is the second writer writing in the Hungarian language to win this award, after Imre Kertész in 2002.
formal ceremony in december
Unlike many other literary prizes, the Nobel Prize is awarded for the complete body of work of an author. Last year’s winner was South Korea’s Han Kang, a novelist known for her haunting depictions of trauma and life as a woman in a society with strict gender roles. She was the first Asian woman and the first Korean to win this award.
A formal ceremony will be held in December to hand out the award, which will include a check for approximately $1.2 million. The recipient is also expected to deliver a lecture at the event. Some previous winners have been reluctant to do so – such as American songwriter Bob Dylan in 2016 – but the prize money is contingent on giving a speech.