The 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art,” said an X post on the handle of the official feed of the Nobel Prize.
The X handle further wrote, “The 2025 Nobel Prize laureate in literature László Krasznahorkai also looks to the East in adopting a more contemplative, finely calibrated tone. The result is a string of works inspired by the deep-seated impressions left by his journeys to China and Japan.”
“About the search for a secret garden, his 2003 novel ‘Északról hegy, Délről tó, Nyugatról utak, Keletről folyó’ (‘A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East’, 2022) is a mysterious tale with powerful lyrical sections that takes place southeast of Kyoto,” the Nobel Prize official handle wrote.
Further the X handle wrote, “The work has the sense of a prelude to the rich ‘Seiobo járt odalent’ (2008; ‘Seiobo There Below’, 2013), a collection of seventeen stories arranged in a Fibonacci sequence about the role of beauty and artistic creation in a world of blindness and impermanence. Alongside his quintet of epics, it represents Krasznahorkai’s major work.”
The book is a masterful portrayal, in the course of which the reader is led through a row of ‘side doors’ to the inexplicable act of creation.