Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai won the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, for what the Swedish Academy called “his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”
Known for his winding sentences and dystopian themes, Krasznahorkai has frequently been compared to Kafka and Gogol. His debut novel, Satantango, published in 1985, followed the collapse of a rural community in Hungary, while more recent works, including the novels The Prisoner of Urga and Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens, were inspired by the author’s travels to Mongolia and China.
Krasznahorkai joins last year’s winner, the South Korean author Han Kang, as well as Bob Dylan, Harold Pinter, and Toni Morrison, in receiving what is widely regarded as literature’s highest honor, which comes with prize money of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million).