László Krasznahorkai presented with Nobel Prize in Literature at Stockholm ceremony – video

Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai was presented with the Nobel Prize in Literature at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm on Wednesday.

Krasznahorkai received the Nobel Prize

Krasznahorkai was presented with the prize by Swedish King Carl Gustaf XVI at the Stockholm Concert Hall.

In her opening address, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, chair of the Board of the Nobel Foundation, said: “The prize in literature is awarded to an authorship where melancholy and apocalypse seem to dominate the picture, but where the force of art and creation, unfathomable as it is, may still transcend the dark and violent powers.”

“Through knowledge, integrity and excellence, through creativity and inspiration, the laureates offer hope,” she said.

“We must not just be passive spectators, but active contributors in defending the freedom of science and literature and the strive for peace to transform the world into a better place for humankind.”

Praising the Hungarian writer, Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Literature, said it was “Krasznahorkai’s greatness as a writer to have succeeded in combining an artistic gaze, entirely free of illusion, that sees through the fragility of the orders established by man, with an unwavering faith in the power of literature”.

Krasznahorkai Year started

He praised Krasznahorkai’s 1985 novel Satantango in which the writer “portrays, in powerfully suggestive terms, a dejected group of souls on a largely abandoned collective farm just before the fall of communism”.

“This apocalyptic theme is further heightened in Krasznahorkai’s second major novel, The Melancholy of Resistance, which is set in a small town in a Carpathian valley,” Olsson said.

A poster of Krasznahorkai at ELTE University:

In his later works, Krasznahorkai “further develops his existentially penetrating writing, rooted as it is in a central European tradition of dark absurdism and burlesque humour that extends from Franz Kafka to Thomas Bernhard,” he said.

“Krasznahorkai’s signature as a writer is a flowing syntax that encompasses both weightiness and lightness, melancholy and elation, tall tales and poetic intensity,” Olsson said.

Krasznahorkai was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”.

Watch the full ceremony:

Read also:

• Sensational: Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai wins 2025 Nobel Prize in literature!
• NobelMobil 2025 to roam the streets of Budapest next week celebrating László Krasznahorkai