Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai, whose father hid Jewish roots, awarded Nobel prize

The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Laszlo Krasznahorkai, considered by many as Hungary’s most important living author, whose works explore themes of postmodern dystopia and melancholy.

The Swedish Academy honors him “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

Krasznahorkai, 71, is “a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess,” the jury says in a statement. “But there are more strings to his bow, and he also looks to the East in adopting a more contemplative, finely calibrated tone.”

Krasznahorkai has spoken in interviews about learning as a child about his father’s secret Jewish past. In 1931, he said, his grandfather changed the family name from Korin to Krasznahorkai, the name of a castle on formerly Hungarian land.

“My father had Jewish roots. But he only told us this secret when I was about eleven. Before that, I had no idea,” he told a Greek publication in 2018. “In the socialist era, it was forbidden to mention it. Well, I am half Jewish, but if things carry on in Hungary as they seem likely to do, I’ll soon be entirely Jewish.”