Krasznahorkai Wins 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature
Can't say I'm surprised at the announcement of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature. Krasznahorkai has been in the top five of the oddsmakers for years and he won the last career-spanning (vs. single title) International Booker Prize about a decade back. My encounter with him was spurred by the 1,001 Novels to Read Before You Die Project, where my 2017 review of his 1989 novel, The Melancholy Resistance, memorably noted that:
"Krasznahorkai is the second Hungarian language author to make the 1001 Books list. The other author is Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertesz, so that makes Krasznahorkai the SECOND most famous Hungarian language novelist in English."
That's the level of insight readers can expect from this blog. Krasznahorkai is a classic Nobel pick- he's popular in French and German, isn't popular in English and has a high-modernist style that appeals to Nobel jury members who take themselves pretty darn seriously. I think they(the Nobel committee) feel like picking a cis white writer from a central European country who doesn't write in English, French or German is a diversity pick.
But this one has been a long time coming. I don't think it will make a difference in America- no one wants to read these books.
Published 5/30/17
The Melancholy Resistance (1989)
by László Krasznahorkai
Krasznahorkai is the second Hungarian language author to make the 1001 Books list. The other author is Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertesz, so that makes Krasznahorkai the SECOND most famous Hungarian language novelist in English. Unlike Fatelessness, Kerteszs' straight forward Holocaust memoir, The Melancholy of Resistance is an avant-garde, paragraph-less fantasia about a nameless town plagued by a mysterious circus, a dead whale and a shadowy mob of hooligans. Did I mention that this book has no paragraphs?
Aside from the total lack of paragraphs- there are chapters, thank god, The Melancholy Resistance avoids any kind of signaling to the reader so that the story unspools "in real time."
The Melancholy Resistance (1989)
by László Krasznahorkai
Krasznahorkai is the second Hungarian language author to make the 1001 Books list. The other author is Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertesz, so that makes Krasznahorkai the SECOND most famous Hungarian language novelist in English. Unlike Fatelessness, Kerteszs' straight forward Holocaust memoir, The Melancholy of Resistance is an avant-garde, paragraph-less fantasia about a nameless town plagued by a mysterious circus, a dead whale and a shadowy mob of hooligans. Did I mention that this book has no paragraphs?
Aside from the total lack of paragraphs- there are chapters, thank god, The Melancholy Resistance avoids any kind of signaling to the reader so that the story unspools "in real time."
Published 4/28/18
The World Goes On (2017)
Laszlo Krasznahorkai
The World Goes On, by Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai, is the third book from the 2018 Booker International Prize list of nominees, and the second book from the six-title short list. I'm on the waiting list for a third short list title, Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmad Saadawi. I'm frankly unsure if I'm going to be able to track down the other three titles. The World Goes On is a collection of short stories, about three hundred pages long, and a terrible, terrible, terrible book to read on a Kindle. Reading the stories in The World Goes On at time resembles Samuel Beckett, who is actually the narrator of one of the stories in the book. Another reference point is Portuguese author Jose Saramago. Stretching back further in time, Borges.
Listing those three authors as reference points is about as complete a description as I can give without simply description the action (or more often) lack of action in each story. The marketing and critical material that accompanies this release includes frequent use of the term "apocalyptic," and I suppose you could say the same thing about Beckett, so in that regard, it's true, but for heaven's sake don't expect anything exciting to happen.
Each story has a puzzle aspect that requires the reader to actively consider, what, exactly, is happening. That is a hallmark of experimental fiction, and a result, The World Goes On fits squarely within that tradition, without innovating- it's like a skilled homage. Krasznahorkai was omitted from the 1001 Books list- you could argue that taking one of his books, instead of Celestial Harmonies by Peter Esterhazy would be a more fitting representative for late twentieth century/early 21st century central European fiction in a representative canon. Not this book though. And I wouldn't think The World Goes On wins the 2018 Booker International Prize, either.
The World Goes On (2017)
Laszlo Krasznahorkai
The World Goes On, by Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai, is the third book from the 2018 Booker International Prize list of nominees, and the second book from the six-title short list. I'm on the waiting list for a third short list title, Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmad Saadawi. I'm frankly unsure if I'm going to be able to track down the other three titles. The World Goes On is a collection of short stories, about three hundred pages long, and a terrible, terrible, terrible book to read on a Kindle. Reading the stories in The World Goes On at time resembles Samuel Beckett, who is actually the narrator of one of the stories in the book. Another reference point is Portuguese author Jose Saramago. Stretching back further in time, Borges.
Listing those three authors as reference points is about as complete a description as I can give without simply description the action (or more often) lack of action in each story. The marketing and critical material that accompanies this release includes frequent use of the term "apocalyptic," and I suppose you could say the same thing about Beckett, so in that regard, it's true, but for heaven's sake don't expect anything exciting to happen.
Each story has a puzzle aspect that requires the reader to actively consider, what, exactly, is happening. That is a hallmark of experimental fiction, and a result, The World Goes On fits squarely within that tradition, without innovating- it's like a skilled homage. Krasznahorkai was omitted from the 1001 Books list- you could argue that taking one of his books, instead of Celestial Harmonies by Peter Esterhazy would be a more fitting representative for late twentieth century/early 21st century central European fiction in a representative canon. Not this book though. And I wouldn't think The World Goes On wins the 2018 Booker International Prize, either.
Published 4/22/20
Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming (2019)
by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming (2019) by Laszlo Krasznahorkai won the inaugural National Book Award for Translated Fiction. The English translation was published by New Directions- one of my favorite houses. It is easy to see why it won, because this is the kind of book: difficult and complicated to follow, that prize juries love. Just completing it feels like an accomplishment because of Krasznahorkai's style: Pages long paragraphs, page long sentences, a half dozen narrators, shifting between narrators between paragraphs and a surfeit of events within the book that take place off the page, leaving the reader to piece together what happened.
The basic idea is that Baron Wencknheim- a dissolute Hungarian royal who has spent his entire adult life in exile in Argentina, returns home to small-town Hungary, where the locals await him with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. The Baron is a bit of a wastrel, but no one in Hungary knows this, and the clash between expectation and reality provides much of the impetus of the pot.
Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming isn't an easy book to describe, other than the characteristics mentioned above, but this description, written from the perspective of the Baron, should give a prospective reader an idea of the vibe:
It is also worth noting that at 512 pages, this is not a short book. Baron Wenckheim is the third Krasznahorkai book I've tackled, and all three have kept to the same experimental style.
Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming (2019)
by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming (2019) by Laszlo Krasznahorkai won the inaugural National Book Award for Translated Fiction. The English translation was published by New Directions- one of my favorite houses. It is easy to see why it won, because this is the kind of book: difficult and complicated to follow, that prize juries love. Just completing it feels like an accomplishment because of Krasznahorkai's style: Pages long paragraphs, page long sentences, a half dozen narrators, shifting between narrators between paragraphs and a surfeit of events within the book that take place off the page, leaving the reader to piece together what happened.
The basic idea is that Baron Wencknheim- a dissolute Hungarian royal who has spent his entire adult life in exile in Argentina, returns home to small-town Hungary, where the locals await him with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. The Baron is a bit of a wastrel, but no one in Hungary knows this, and the clash between expectation and reality provides much of the impetus of the pot.
Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming isn't an easy book to describe, other than the characteristics mentioned above, but this description, written from the perspective of the Baron, should give a prospective reader an idea of the vibe:
the train had already pulled away into that great chaos of the intricate construction of railway switches, detours, and intersections, loop lines and wyes, switch plates, distance signals, waiting bays, and overhead lines — the platform on which those people could have followed the train was no more, and in particular they weren’t lucky, because they found him in the last, that is to say the first carriage, just as, in their moment of discovery, the train pulled away from the last few meters of the platform, so they couldn’t do much more than take some pictures of the train itself: there would be documentation that the train was here, he was on it, exactly as the Austrian news agency had stated in its report this morning, namely he was en route to his primary destination...
It is also worth noting that at 512 pages, this is not a short book. Baron Wenckheim is the third Krasznahorkai book I've tackled, and all three have kept to the same experimental style.
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