László Krasznahorkai, Whose Novels Have Been Adapted by Hungarian Auteur Béla Tarr, Wins Nobel Prize for Literature
Hungarian novelist and screenwriter László Krasznahorkai has won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2025. Several of his novels, includingSátántangó(1985) andThe Melancholy of Resistance(1989), were adapted into feature films byHungarian auteur Béla Tarr. The Swedish Academy unveiled the honoree Thursday. Sátántangó is the Tarr-directed 450-minute adaptation, which was featured in the Berlin Film Festival’s Forum section…
Hungarian novelist and screenwriter László Krasznahorkai has won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2025. Several of his novels, includingSátántangó(1985) andThe Melancholy of Resistance(1989), were adapted into feature films byHungarian auteur Béla Tarr.
The Swedish Academy unveiled the honoree Thursday. Sátántangó is the Tarr-directed 450-minute adaptation, which was featured in the Berlin Film Festival’s Forum section in 1994 where it won the Caligari award.
The honor is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in 1895. The others are prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine, as well as the Nobel Peace Prize.
Last year, South Korean writer Han Kang, whose international breakthrough novel The Vegetarian was made into a film, won the award.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023 went to Norwegian author Jon Fosse, while the 2022 honor was awarded to French author Annie Ernaux, whose autobiographyHappeningwas adapted for the screenby director Audrey Diwanas the abortion drama under the same name that earned the Golden Lion at theVenice Film Festival 2021.
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize for Literature prize has been awarded to an author from any country who has, according to Nobel’s will, written “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.” It is presented by the Swedish Academy.
Past winners include U.S. writers Toni Morrison and Saul Bellow, Britain’s Harold Pinter and William Golding, Ireland’s Samuel Beckett, Canada’s Alice Munro, South Africa’s Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee, Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez, France’s Jean-Paul Sartre, Germany’s Gunter Grass, Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk and China’s Mo Yan.
Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan won the honor in 2016.
