Nobel spotlight on Krasznahorkai

The Hungarian writes in the tradition of Dostoevsky and Kafka.

The award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai was not entirely unexpected because his name was on the unofficial short list.

Such a list circulates every year before the announcement of the award. But he was not a favourite to win because there were more well-known writers on the list.

The Swedish Academy is known to make surprise choices and has sometimes faced criticism for not making the best choice. It cannot be faulted for making a wrong choice this year because Krasznahorkai is among the most eminent living writers and is Nobel class.

He has won many literary honours in the past, though recognition has been slow because English translations of many of his works have appeared only recently. Though Krasznahorkai is mainly known as a novelist, he is also a screen writer, and his works have been adapted for cinema.

The Swedish Academy has praised him for “his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art’’. He is a novelist in the central European tradition and has the lineage of great writers such as Fyodor Dostoevsky and Franz Kafka.

He has an artistic and intellectual kinship with Kafka whose vision has influenced him. Elements of the absurd and the grotesque come together in his work, and his worldview is often considered dystopian. He presents a bleak and melancholic world, but terror and humour co-exist in much of his work, making it daunting, yet human.

He started writing in the last few years about communism in Hungary and has faced censorship and oppression. His first novel Satantango contained most of the themes that would characterise his later works —not just the ordinariness of life, but also its paranoia, confusion and uncertainty.

He drew his artistic sustenance from the life he knew best in Hungary, but was also inspired by his travels to China and Japan. His success lay in universalising those experiences to depict the human condition on his terms. His style is difficult and demanding and he writes long sentences that run into pages. His latest novel Herscht 07769, which has just one sentence, depicts fears about the rise of fascism in Europe. But he says he is not a political writer and writes only about society. 

The question that often arises about the Nobel Prize is why it often goes to writers from Europe and North America and ignores women writers. Krasznahorkai and most other writers who have been honoured with the world’s top literary honour might well deserve it, but there is a long list of writers from other parts of the world who might better deserve it.