STOCKHOLM (AP) — Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, whose surreal and anarchic novels combine a bleak world view with mordant humor, won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for work the judges said upholds the power of art in the midst of “apocalyptic terror.”
The Nobel judges said the 71-year-old author, whose novels sometimes consist of just one long sentence, is “a great epic writer” whose work "is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess."
He’s the first Nobel literature winner from Hungary since Imre Kertesz in 2002 and joins a list of laureates that includes Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison and Kazuo Ishiguro.
“I am calm and very nervous,” Krasznahorkai told Radio Sweden after getting news of the prize, which comes with an award of more than $1 million. “This is the f