Hello Gentle Reader,
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025 was awarded to the Hungarian writer Krasznahorkai László with the citation:
“for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”
The announcement of the laureate for the Nobel Prize in Literature remains fashioned into a particular Swedish adoration for procedure as virtue. At 1:00pm (CEST) the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, Mats Malm, comes through the beautiful white doors of the Swedish Academy, takes his position behind the little white picket pen and greets those assembled, welcoming them to Swedish Academy and then announces this year’s laureate in literature. This year, however, Mats Malm does not bow out to Anders Olsson Chair of the Swedish Academy’s Nobel Committee, who in years past read a prepared statement on the laureate and their literary work. Due to Olsson being ill, this task fell to fellow Committee member, Steve Sem-Sandberg.
Anders Olsson’s recitations are longwinded lectures. They are dry sermons. Quite positively calcifying when viewed against previous award announcements by previous Permanent Secretaries: Horace Engdahl, Peter Englund, and Sara Danius. Back then, the Permanent Secretary managed the announcement solely. Announcing the winner and their citation in the variety of languages they have command of. Afterwards they would engage in a short and enlightening interview. Here the Permanent Secretary would provide a brief overview of the authors work and a few glowing remarks, before recommending a couple of works for interested readers. Anders Olsson either lacks the charisma or the interest in engaging in this impromptu form of media relations. Instead, Olsson comes prepared and delivers the decision with academic authority. Highlighting a few important works, discussing the writer’s oeuvre and commenting on their themes. It’s not a matter that Anders Olsson way of handling the years announcement is bad. Its just not as exciting. It’s more enduring than elating.
For example, when Horace Engdahl announced Doris Lessing as the laureate for 2007, Engdahl paused the announcement to allow the cheers ring out in the Stockholm Stock Exchange Building. There are so few cheers now. Afterwards, in an interview, Engdahl did his best to summarize Lessing’s long literary career, from her debut novel, “The Grass is Singing,” to her monumental, “The Children of Violence Series,” – which Engdahl described as her magnum opus – all the way to the second peak defining Doris Lessing’s bibliography with her autobiographies. Engdahl couldn’t comment on the suggestion that Doris Lessing had been a writer discussed on and off for decades prior, but he did take the opportunity to highlight Lessing’s command of the short story form, which Engdahl noted is often overlooked when compared to her large and engrossing novels.
To reiterate: the current prize announcement format being divided up amongst the Permanent Secretary and the Nobel Committee, fragments the event. It brings into question the role of the Permanent Secretary when compared to the Nobel Committee and the Chairman. Mats Malm is routinely criticized for being wooden and apprehensive when facing the media. No doubt, Malm is an accomplished administrator and academic, but a component of the Permanent Secretaryship is media relations. Then again, perhaps if Mats Malm was actually granted the opportunity to conduct the announcement in a singular capacity, confidence and some charisma could be tended too; and to put it frankly, Anders Olsson is not in possession of these qualities either.
This year, however, with Steve Sem-Sandberg filling in for Anders Olsson, there was a slight injection of warmth. This could come from the fact that Sem-Sandberg is an admirer of Krasznahorkai László, or he just has a bit more ember to his stove then say Mats Malm or Anders Olsson. Yet, this second part of the announcement, whereby members of the Nobel Committee take their position in the white pen, is awkward. In this instance, Steve Sem-Sandberg read through the pre-composed bio-bibliography by Anders Olsson, while fellow committee member Ellen Mattson stands in waiting. It’s a bit awkward to watch. I feel for Ellen Mattson obviously, as the optics can be viewed that she’s being employed to placate or ward off any criticism that can be aimed at the academy for not valuing (or at least appearing to) female voices. In the end, both Steve Sem-Sandberg and Ellen Mattson would facilitate a brief question and answer period. Steve Sem-Sandberg in English and Ellen Mattson in Swedish. Regardless the current announcement set up is logistically awkward and unfocused. Returning the master of ceremonies responsibilities back to the Permanent Secretary would solve a lot of this disjointedness. While it is understandable that perhaps many members of the academy or the Nobel Committee, would like a kick at the can, the current itineration is missing the necessary spark to liven up the event. Instead, it reduces the announcement to a pastiche relay race lacking a cohesive narrative thread to sustain viewers attention or their engagement.
As for this years Nobel Laureate in Literature, Krasznahorkai László, the reaction and reception is universally applauded and acclaimed. Unsurprising, as Krasznahorkai has been considered a perennial contender for the prize for years now, right alongside his countryman Nádas Péter. In a manner similar to Jon Fosse, bestowing the Nobel Prize in Literature on to Krasznahorkai László may not be viewed as surprising or original in scope, and can be dismissed by others as expected, even parading into predictable territory. At the same time, however, the Swedish Academy is routinely condemned and criticized for overlooking or failing to award titans of literature. In recent memory alone this includes: Ismail Kadare, Antonio Tabucchi, Philip Roth, Milan Kundera, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. These are but a handful of recent writers who died without the prize, and had long been rumoured as perennial candidates. It is unfair position then to critise the Swedish Academy on both fronts. One for awarding obscure writers with limited readership but critical acclaim – Elfriede Jelinek, J.M.G Le Clézio, Herta Müller, Patrick Modiano – one year. Then on the second front, critise them for awarding globally recognized and lauded talent – V.S. Naipaul, J.M. Coetzee, Jon Fosse or Krasznahorkai László. One can always lament that there is only one prize and many deserving candidates and writers for the award; but, inevitably, the Nobel Prize in Literature will always fall short. This year, however, the consensus certainly is one of joy. The Swedish Academy has decided to bestow the Nobel Prize in Literature onto a writer whose literary vision is absolutely singular. There are few writers writing and working now, who are as uncompromising in their literary vision as Krasznahorkai László, whose work remains complex, formidable, and inflexible in literary principle. The rewards, however, as any reader of Krasznahorkai László will always be there, which is why his readership has always been cultish and fanatical in the early years, before entering the literary mainstream and achieving universal critical acclaim.
In awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to Krasznahorkai László, the Swedish Academy has also done a necessary course correction on breaking up the stylistic monotony of the previous Nobel Laureates. While, Jon Fosse and Han Kang, where considered attempts at moving away from the autumnal austerity and clinical acute literary language of earlier laureates Louise Glück and Annie Ernaux, with Fosse’s rhythmic repetitious tidal language and Han’s brittle lyricism. Still, one would not call either Jon Fosse or Han Kang exceptionally innovative writers in stylistic terms, at least not when compared to Krasznahorkai. A defining feature of Krasznahorkai László’s novels is his magmatic text. Pages and pages of dense black text, with sentences running on in an unspooling labyrinth. Readers will always find themselves swept away in the current of Krasznahorkai’s torrential and unrelenting text, oozing forth without fail, into an apocalyptical landscape, be it a failing and collapsing Soviet era collective farm; an insular village tucked away in the Carpathian Mountains, whose residents stand on the precipice of anarchy, succumbing to their baseline chaotic and violent tendencies, all that is required is the necessary catalyst to ignite this degradation; or a German village besieged by violence, arson, murder, vandalism, and the sustained paranoid surety of the end of everything, but also the strange amalgamation between this bleak finality and the beauty of art, the sanctuary of it. After reading “The Melancholy of Resistance,” the American writer and critic, Susan Sontag, styled Krasznahorkai László the “master of the apocalypse,” and this crowning title follows with ominous airs, both enticing and warning readers of what to expect. Krasznahorkai’s world is always already dystopian with an ominous understanding that the collapse is not happening, but has yet to happen. The decline, the decomposition, the decay of everything is the ultimate and final state of everything. Krasznahorkai’s writing is not polite in or poetically waxing about themes of impermanence or absence. No, Krasznahorkai’s vision is the preoccupation turned premonition of the end. This has always been the defining feature of Krasznahorkai László’s bibliography. It picks up after T.S. Eliots, “The Wasteland,” and surveys subsequent cycle of new wastelands created in the collapse of civility and perceived political and social order, and the cosmological collapse.
In their extended review and presentation of Krasznahorkai László, the Swedish Academy highlighted Krasznahorkai’s lineage to Central European literature, with particular reference to the literary forebearers, Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard. Especially in relation to a fixation on the absurdity of existence. The fallacy of meaning. Our communal condition I attributing meaning to circumstances and events, even when none exist. This is the gallows humour of Krasznahorkai, which follows in the tradition of Kafka and Bernhard. Finally following suit, Krasznahorkai has a particular penchant for the grotesque and exaggerated, showcasing how easy it is for people to step outside of their civility and devolve into their instinctual and primal forms, when the conditions present themselves. False prophets and conmen, each come with their greasy promises of saviour, but ultimately, they lead their congregation into further decay and ruin, or rob their customers blind, leaving them with piss in a bottle, marketed as a tonic and cure-all. Then, Krasznahorkai László changes direction once more. The novel “A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East,” and the fragmented novel or short story collection, “Seiobo There Below,” begin to examine the remedial qualities of art, beauty, and pure aesthetic pleasures within the world, providing if not complete sanctuary from the sustained and expedited march towards destruction, then at the very least, a point of reprieve. Late modernist hellscapes of “Satantango,” “The Melancholy of Resistance,” “War & War,” and “Herscht 07769,” has now evolved into something more interior, mor abstract, philosophical and meditative, captured within the complex, convoluted and intricate magmatic prose that has come to define Krasznahorkai’s work. Now, however, the sentences fold in and onto each other, repetitions spur new digressions and negations. Admirers of complex and innovative prose, could not get enough of it. If Krasznahorkai’s literary talents were even in doubt or in dispute, they were quickly quieted. “Seibo There Below,” is beloved and admired for the author’s apparent final release of his style, allowing his sentences to continue to swell and expand course forward without barrier or dam and flood the pages with and relentless torrent of thoughts, sensations, observations, reflections, admirations, digressions, and philosophical treaties.
As a laureate, Krasznahorkai László is similar to Jon Fosse, in his work is free of political association. This means, Krasznahorkai’s award is free from the usual questions of political maneuvering and questioning. While, the Swedish Academy maintains that all their decisions and deliberations are exempt from political motivations, it is not difficult to corollate some inference of political gestures with some of the awards. With a rise of a tolerance towards totalitarianism, an upwelling of violence as a means of political solution, terrorism as political discourse; the apocalyptical vision of Krasznahorkai’s oeuvre is the prophetic vision and testimony of the time, as the world slides further and further into madness and violent lunacy. When the basic tenements of democracy are under siege, not only from external forces, but growing autocratic insurrectionist forces, by radical and incompetent individuals, Krasznahorkai provides an increasingly alarming literary portrait of similar events, in more dystopian and allegorical landscapes. These are not novels to provide comfort, and they are no longer issuing warnings. They threaten to become prophetic visions of an impending all consuming destructive end. Choosing to award Krasznahorkai László the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy has acknowledged not only a masterful visionary writer, but also one with prescient understanding of the self-destructive impulses that reside at the core of the human condition. What is an award though if it only acknowledges the forewarning of our inevitable destruction, be it through divine exhaustion in the form of the rapture, or our own manufactured climate catastrophe. Afterall, prophesying the end of the world, has been a human proclivity since we first gained the capacity for language and communication. Therefore, it is necessary for the Swedish Academy to also acknowledge and elevate Krasznahorkai’s interest and literary ability to not only create exceptional works of literary beauty, but also affirm and reaffirm the power of art in all of its forms.
In a manner similar to 2023 and 2015, the Nobel Prize in Literature lands solid footing. While a few may gripe about the award going to an ‘obvious,’ candidate, the award itself is one of merit and settled. If the only criticism is its obvious, then these are but minor blemishes that can be brushed aside. Krasznahorkai László is an exceptional and talented writer. If anything, the Nobel Prize in literature for this year is at rest and at home, with a writer of purely literary merit. When it came to speculation about Krasznahorkai and the Nobel Prize in Literature, the prevailing thought was always a matter of when, not if. Though it was always tempered by caution, as many great writers were and are always being tempted by the notion of ‘when,’ not ‘if,’ and this includes the perennially neglected Adonis. While I recognize, I am not the ideal reader for Krasznahorkai’s dense, uncompromising, torrential, lava flowing oozing novels, I am capable of recognizing the merits and greatness of Krasznahorkai’s work. This years Nobel Prize in Literature has certainly been granted to a writer of brilliant achievements. It leaves me curious to what kind of deliberations the Swedish Academy engaged in when discussing his novels which move between apocalyptic visions to detailed digressions of aesthetic appreciation and wonderment. When deliberating Samuel Beckett, members of the Swedish Academy viewed his plays and novels as being in complete contrast to Alfred Nobel’s will of an ‘ideal direction,’ for their morbid sense of humour and nihilistic landscapes. Did this assembled version of the Swedish Academy face the same discussions? Did they attempt to reconcile the differences between Krasznahorkai’s view of the human condition, to that of Alfred Nobel’s willed stipulation of ‘ideal direction,’? Or was the vagueness of the notion of what constitutes an ideal direction, abandoned in favour of reviewing the author on purely literary terms. Afterall, Krasznahorkai László had won the Man Booker International Prize, the National Book Award for Translated Literature, the Best Translated Book Award (twice), and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. This is not a writer of no merit. Regardless, the decision is welcomed and breathes new life into the award, disrupting the conformity of writers who write in subdued and quiet voices, and instead celebrates a writer who surveys and sails amongst the cosmos. If there is any complaint on my part is perhaps, it’s getting a bit old that the Nobel Prize in Literature continues to alternate between a man and a woman writer, and feels the need to return to Europe to reset before moving into different literary landscapes. Still if this is how it needs to be for now, then I am more then content that it went to Krasznahorkai László.
This years Nobel Prize in Literature is well deserved. Warmest congratulations to Krasznahorkai László, this will certainly be a popular award for decades to come.
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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