Hungary’s Krasznahorkai wins Nobel for literature

What happened

László Krasznahorkai, the author of acclaimed novels including “The Melancholy of Resistance” and “Satantango,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature Thursday. The Swedish Academy said it had bestowed one of literature’s most prestigious honors on the 71-year-old Hungarian for his “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

Who said what

Krasznahorkai, hailed by critic Susan Sontag as the “contemporary master of the Apocalypse,” had been a “perennial favorite for the Nobel,” The New York Times said. Fellow writers have long “revered” him for his “idiosyncratic style and bleak narratives that can often be slyly humorous.” His novels probe the “utter hopelessness” of human existence in near-endless sentences, Hungarian literature expert Zsuzsanna Varga told The Associated Press, but they’re also “incredibly funny.”

Krasznahorkai said in a statement he was “deeply glad” to have won the Nobel “because this award proves that literature exists in itself” and “is still being read.” Literature, he added, “offers a certain hope that beauty, nobility and the sublime still exist for their own sake. It may offer hope even to those in whom life itself only barely flickers.”

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What next?

Krasznahorkai will collect his Nobel Prize and $1.2 million award at a Dec. 10 ceremony in Stockholm, along with all other laureates except this year’s peace prize winner, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who will accept her award in Oslo.