Oktubre 9, 2025

"László Krasznahorkai has won the Nobel prize in literature."

The Guardian reports.

Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai has been chosen as the winner “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

44 (na) komento:

Dave Begley ayon kay ...

After this latest peace deal with Hamas, if Trump doesn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize they might as well close up shop.

Robert Marshall ayon kay ...

Is that OUR Laslo?

Ann Althouse ayon kay ...

I feel like just about every year László Krasznahorkai wins the Nobel prize in literature.

Kevin ayon kay ...

In other news, Laslo Spatula has won the Nobel Prize for Althouse blog commenting, “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of an unrelenting news cycle, reaffirms the power of laughter.”

Ann Althouse ayon kay ...

And every year it's somebody winning for a compelling vision of the power of art in the midst of apocalyptic terror. It's always so deep, dark, and gloomy.

Tom T. ayon kay ...

He's an opponent of Orban. This is a reactionary award.

Kevin ayon kay ...

This is a reactionary award.

It’s 2025. The word is performative.

Kirk Parker ayon kay ...

Althouse @6;23am,

What would you expect coming from a nation of genuine Scandinavian pessimists?

rehajm ayon kay ...

Yes I don’t get the obsession with the apocalypse. I thought they were just trying to hard sell the climate change scams…

Political Junkie ayon kay ...

Laslo!!! We all know!!!! Winner!!!!!!Love ya, Laslo!!!!

Aggie ayon kay ...

He is László

Howard ayon kay ...

Dystopia sells because unless you live in the US, the world is always shitting on you. My son has been dating a Uber successful tech industry woman from Switzerland for the past year or so. She claims that the US dominance is because of our optimism and confidence, we believe we can adapt and overcome any and all obstacles.

Lem Vibe Bandit ayon kay ...

Is that OUR Laslo?

I always knew Commenters here were good. Just not Nobel Laureate good.

Cappy ayon kay ...

And the least pronounceable name.

amr ayon kay ...

"Least pronounceable"? Just like it's spelled:
"Kraszna-horkai".

rehajm ayon kay ...

Dystopia sells because unless you live in the US, the world is always shitting on you. My son has been dating a Uber successful tech industry woman from Switzerland

Holy carp- the world is shits you in Switzerland??

Wince ayon kay ...

I get the impression this Guardian writer is covertly explaining why he or she didn’t finish reading “this famously unparagraphed novel.”

Starting to read this famously unparagraphed novel is like entering a labyrinth: a claustrophobic zone where the mystery of an arriving leviathan (and all that symbolises), of the suffocating small town into which it arrives, not to mention the nocturne which is the setting, all combined almost unbearably in a portrait of powerlessness and society’s failure.

Howard ayon kay ...

It must be the guilt for not standing for anything other than your own comfort and security.

Howard ayon kay ...

"Kraszna-horkai". Gesundheit!

Howard ayon kay ...

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock".

Jersey Fled ayon kay ...

They lost me at oeuvre.

Temujin ayon kay ...

I have to wonder if his writing is that good, or his stories are that good, or people just want to be able to say they've read his book, which was one long, run-on sentence, and "man...aren't I smarter for that?"
Well...hell. I'm going to go back and rework this story I've been working on for...oh...70 or so years and eliminate the periods. I'm pretty good at run-on sentences already and those darn periods just get in my way. I sometimes lose my train of thought when I hit that period. It's like..."Wait...where was I?".

And this world could certainly use more semi-colons.

Disparity of Cult ayon kay ...

Sparklefarts and the Bitter One win Grammys for narrating their audio books. Yawn.

Disparity of Cult ayon kay ...

William Gaddis had a similar style.

William50 ayon kay ...

László Krasznahorkai ...

It's like a name out of Superman Bizarro World.

William ayon kay ...

I read the NYT write up of his work. He wrote on four hundred pages novel that has only one period. I'd rather watch a dog walk on his hind legs than read such a novel. I wonder how much of a bump his sales will get after winning this prize....I asked Chatgpt who is the most obscure Nobel lit prize winner. There's quite a long list. I'd give the nod to Frans Eemil Sillanpaa. He's a Finnish novelist who won in 1939. Nobody took the trouble to translate him........I have actually read a book by Pearl S. Buck. I thought it was pretty good. She's the prize winner whose rep has suffered the most downward revision. On the plus side, her books are sufficiently read to cause her to suffer a downward revision.

William ayon kay ...

The Nobel people were ahead of the trend. Long before the Hollywood people gave out Oscars to movies no one wanted to see, they were handing out Nobel lit prizes to authors no one wanted to read.

Caroline ayon kay ...

His novel The Melancholy of Resistance may well be captivatingly written— meant, I think, as a Milan Kundera-esque chronicle of oppression behind the iron curtain. But Krasnahorkai’s dystopia is a thinly veiled current day Hungary under Victor Orban, the great satan whose citizens are experiencing none of the pathologies overtaking his European neighbours who so virtuously admitted millions of Muslim immigrants who hate them and want to sexually subjugate their women. Conservative author Rod Dreher, who lives in Hungary, describes it as “America in the fifties.” No LGBT propaganda, women feel safe walking the city at night, lots of families and communities about. Oh— and this author has expressed suitable horror of Trump to make his selection sit well with the bien-pensants of the Davos crowd.
Kamala will win the Nobel for her memoir before Trump ever wins a peace prize. He, and we, should just stop talking about it. He, and we, are counter cultural, and shouldn’t expect it.

Laslo Spatula ayon kay ...

Mildly disappointing when they get my name wrong like that.

However, the latest issue of “The Phantom of the Movies’ Videoscope” has a four-star review of my latest film.

From the review:

“As a jazzy score percolates, a sonorous vice tells us a Humphrey Bogart died October 2, 1959. It's "sun-kissed L.A.," a place where "people are made expendable every day," and we float on the jazz notes, transported on the clips of '50s street scenes into an hypnotic Maltese Falcon-like illustrated audio book learning of the real Bogart who died January 14, 1957 and immersed in the tale of yet a third shadowy Bogie… …”The Three Humphreys”, one of Stancik's finest, is a marvelous tongue-in-check exposé of conspiracy theories wrapped in conspiracy theories. It's funny, rapier smart, and cuts to the bone.”

Lots of wonderful 1940s and 1950s stock footage, no vulgarities AND music numbers. For those who love the noir films of that era you might be surprised how much you will like this one:

https://www.laslofilms.com/the-three-humphreys

I am Laslo.

RCOCEAN II ayon kay ...
Naalis ng may-ari ang komentong ito.
RCOCEAN II ayon kay ...

The second i saw his name , I thought "He's a not a woman, black, brown, or asian. He's from Hungary, why did they give it him? Oh wait, he must be Jewish". So, I go to Google type in his and "jewish" and Bingo!

Lets see Pinter - Jewish, Dylan - jewish, Whosit - who got the Poetry award - Jewish. The trend continues.

narciso ayon kay ...

He hates orban the designated hate object like the french abortion fangirl who loves terrorists

Josephbleau ayon kay ...

Jewish Hungarians have been so smart that they were even referred to as Martians a new race from another world. People like von Neumann, Wigner, Teller, von Kármán, Gabor, Polanyi, Erdős, Pólya among others. Many did work at Los Alamos, and they were probably the smartest people in the world, all from a small country.

narciso ayon kay ...

There was another prize winner who had orban derangement

Kurt Schuler ayon kay ...

Krasznahorkai? WHODAT???

Steven (Original) ayon kay ...

The Nobel Prize committee probably wishes that it could revoke the prize given to Ivo Andric, the winner in 1961. His work dealt mainly with live in Bosnia under the Ottomans (according to Wikipedia). I have read his novel Bridge on the Drina and I can highly recommend it.

buwaya ayon kay ...

"And every year it's somebody winning for a compelling vision of the power of art in the midst of apocalyptic terror. It's always so deep, dark, and gloomy."

Pretty much, yes.

buwaya ayon kay ...

"I have read his novel Bridge on the Drina and I can highly recommend it." - Ditto. Not apocalyptic. The tone is... wry nostalgia?

Kakistocracy ayon kay ...

A well deserved one, and also an inspiration for great movie director Bela Tarr.

Good to see the Nobel academy giving its prize on purely writing grounds, and not political ones.

Satantango is where I started and it's perfect — short and brilliant.

Kakistocracy ayon kay ...

I hereby announce sanctions of 100% on Norway or Sweden or whichever country does these things. The fake committee cannot appreciate the true literary talent of my tweets. Sad.
Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Lucien ayon kay ...

Krasznahorkai translates roughly to “ponytail swish”.

Kirk Parker ayon kay ...

Here's a third recommendation of Bridge on the Drina

Lazarus ayon kay ...

Two other Hungarian novelists were Péter Esterházy, a descendant of Haydn's noble patrons, and Imre Kertész, a survivor of Auschwitz and the first Hungarian to receive the prize. Both died in 2016. There was an effort a few years back to make Sándor Márai happen, he died in the Eighties.

Big Mike ayon kay ...

"László Krasznahorkai has won the Nobel prize in literature."

It’s amazing, the stories one can write based on nothing more than a pretty woman with a ponytail on a treadmill. Swish. Swish

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