Books by László Krasznahorkai
László Krasznahorkai (1954-) is a Hungarian novelist and screenwriter, born in Gyula near the border with Romania. In 2025, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.” Anders Olsson, Chair of the Nobel Committee, called Krasznahorkai a “great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterised by absurdism and grotesque excess.”
Satantango
by László Krasznahorkai & translated by George Szirtes
Satantango (1985) is the debut novel of Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, and probably his most accessible. The novel is relatively short—fewer than 300 pages—but the sentences (and paragraphs) are long, and it took a decade or so to translate. Set on a decaying collective farm, when it was published in English in 2012, the Guardian called it "brutal, relentless and so amazingly bleak that it's often quite funny." It also hailed it as "an obviously brilliant novel." Satantango was also turned into a 7+ hour movie, directed by Béla Tarr.
