László Krasznahorkai

Nobelpriset i litteratur 2025: "för hans visionära och kraftfulla författarskap som mitt i undergångens fasa upprätthåller tron på konstens möjligheter." Han är författare och får i uppdrag att skriva en text om den sista vargen i Extremadura, ett högslättsområde som tidigare var utposten för de spanska erövrarna. Det är högst ovisst varför han, bosatt i Berlin, fått uppdraget. Av misstag? Har han tagits för någon annan? Ödet? Uppdraget, som kanske inte är ett uppdrag, växer i storlek och blir till en alltigenom olycksbringande upplevelse, likt en berättelse utan början och slut, en mening som förvägras att sätta punkt eller till den sista vargens sorgesamma ylande. Jägmästaren Herman får i uppgift att utplåna ett skogsområdes sista rovdjur. Han tar sig an uppdraget med friskt mod, men kommer snart på andra tankar. I den efterföljande Herman II betraktas samma skeende utifrån några barocka besökares blickar. Skabrösa officerare från överklassen, som förlustar sig i en by vid skogens utkant, blir på olika sätt indragna i Hermans angelägenheter och hela berättelsen välts över ända. Den sista vargen, Herman och Herman II visar att László Krasznahorkai är en mästare även i det kortare formatet. Med osviklig känsla för prosans yttre gränser har han här samlat tre berättelser som på olika sätt öppnar texten lika mycket som den kör in en pil rakt in i människans mest fördärvbringande sidor. Om hans senaste bok Seiobo där nere: "Det här är en komplicerad och mångtydig bok på ett hypnotiserande konstfullt språk som värjer sig mot vardaglig slöläsning. Översättaren Daniel Gustafsson har utfört ett herkuliskt storverk, och man förstår varför författaren allt oftare nämns som Nobelpriskandidat." Aftonbladet "Seiobo där nere är ett märkvärdigt konstverk." Expressen "Det är inget annat än storslaget. Om inte mer än så." GP "Vad är detta för bok? En roman? Novellsamling? Essä? ... Krasznahorkai skriver i långa men sällsamt lätta satser. Genom dessa periodiska bågar, fulla av inskott och utvikningar, får prosan en ornamental karaktär som påminner om utsmyckningarna i Alhambra eller Bachs barocka passioner." Dagens Nyheter

The Last Wolf (translated by George Szirtes) is Krasznahorkai in a maddening nutshell--it features a classic obsessed narrator, a man hired (by mistake) to write the true tale of the last wolf in Spain. This miserable experience (being mistaken for another person, dragged about a cold foreign place, and appalled by a species's end) is narrated--all in a single sentence--as a sad looping tale, a howl more or less, in a dreary Berlin bar to a patently bored bartender. Herman (translated by John Batki), "a peerless virtuoso of trapping who guards the splendid mysteries of an ancient craft gradually sinking into permanent oblivion," is asked to clear a forest's last "noxious beasts." He begins with great zeal, although in time he "suspects that maybe he was 'on the wrong scent.'" Herman switches sides, deciding to track entirely new game ...

Seiobo er en japansk gudinne. Ferskentrærne hennes blomstrer bare en gang hvert 3000. år, men den som ser blomstringen, forblir udødelig. Folk har sluttet å tro på slike historier, men ikke å lengte etter dem. I Seiobo der nede undersøker László Krasznahorkai vår lengsel etter det vakre. Han skildrer hvordan det i hver epoke, til enhver tid har eksistert fullkomne gjenstander: En egretthegre som jakter urørlig i en elv, grimasene til en No-maske, den absolutte nakenheten i ikonets ansikt. Seiobo der nede kom opprinnelig ut i 2008, og regnes som et av Krasznahorkais viktigste verk. Boken består av 17 løst sammenhengende fortellinger der forfatteren tar med leseren på en reise gjennom tid og rom, fra Kyoto til Venezia, fra Paris til Athen via Grenada og Geneve. Det er en melankolsk, språklig briljant prosatekst om oppfordrer oss til å ta vare på evnen til å gi vår fulle konsentrasjon til det sublime i kunsten.

Shortlisted for The Man Booker International Prize 2018 A Hungarian interpreter obsessed with waterfalls, at the edge of the abyss in his own mind, wanders the chaotic streets of Shanghai. A traveller, reeling from the sights and sounds of Varanasi, encounters a giant of a man on the banks of the Ganges ranting on the nature of a single drop of water. A child labourer in a Portuguese marble quarry wanders off from work one day into a surreal realm utterly alien from his daily toils. In The World Goes On, a narrator first speaks directly, tells twenty-one unforgettable stories, then bids farewell ('for here I would leave this earth and these stars, because I would take nothing with me'). As László Krasznahorkai himself explains: 'Each text is about drawing our attention away from this world, speeding our body toward annihilation, and immersing ourselves in a current of thought or a narrative...' The World Goes On is another masterpiece by the winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. 'The excitement of his writing,' Adam Thirlwell proclaimed in the New York Review of Books, 'is that he has come up with his own original forms-there is nothing else like it in contemporary literature.'

Known for his brilliantly dark fictional visions, Laszlo Krasznahorkai is one of the most respected European writers of his generation and the winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. Here, he brings us on a journey through China at the dawn of the new millennium. On the precipice of its emergence as a global power, China is experiencing cataclysms of modernity as its harsh Maoist strictures meet the chaotic flux of globalism. What remains of the Middle Kingdom's ancient cultural riches? And can a Westerner truly understand China's past and present--or the murky waters where the two meet? Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is both a travel memoir and the chronicle of a distinct intellectual shift as one of the most captivating contemporary writers and thinkers begins to engage with the cultures of Asia and the legacies of its interactions with Europe in a newly globalized society. Rendered in English by award-winning translator Ottilie Mulzet, Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is an important work, marking the emergence of Krasznahorkai as a truly global novelist.

In The Last Wolf, a philosophy professor is mistakenly hired to write the true tale of the last wolf of Extremadura, a barren stretch of Spain. His miserable experience is narrated in a single, rolling sentence to a patently bored bartender in a dreary Berlin bar. In Herman, a master trapper is asked to clear a forest's last 'noxious beasts.' Herman begins with great zeal, although in time he switches sides, deciding to track entirely new game... In Herman II, the same events are related from the perspective of strange visitors to the region, a group of hyper-sexualised aristocrats who interrupt their orgies to pitch in with the manhunt of poor Herman... These intense, perfect novellas, full of Krasznhorkai's signature sense of foreboding and dark irony, are perfect examples of his craft.

Winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize The Melancholy of Resistance, László Krasznahorkai's magisterial, surreal novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town. A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumours. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find - music, cosmology, fascism. The novel's characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Eszter, plotting her takeover of the town; her weakling husband; and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender centre of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found. Compact, powerful and intense, The Melancholy of Resistance, as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, 'is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type.' And yet, miraculously, the novel, in the words of Guardian, 'lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds.'

Winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize Beauty, in László Krasznahorkai's new novel, reflects, however fleeting, the sacred - even if we are mostly unable to bear it. In Seiobo There Below we see the Japanese goddess Seiobo returning to mortal realms in search of perfection. An ancient Buddha being restored; the Italian renaissance painter Perugino managing his workshop; a Japanese Noh actor rehearsing; a fanatic of Baroque music lecturing to a handful of old villagers; tourists intruding into the rituals of Japan's most sacred shrine; a heron as it gracefully hunts its prey. Told in chapters that sweep us across the world and through time, covering the furthest reaches of human experience, Krasznahorkai demands that we pause and ask ourselves these questions: What is sacred? How do we define beauty? What makes great art endure? Melancholic and mesmerisingly beautiful, this latest novel by the author of Satantango shows us how to glimpse the divine through extraordinary art and human endeavour. Winner of Best Translated Book of the Year Award 2014 Translated by Ottilie Mulzet

Known for his brilliantly dark fictional visions, Laszlo Krasznahorkai is one of the most respected European writers of his generation. Here, he brings us on a journey through China at the dawn of the new millennium. On the precipice of its emergence as a global power, China is experiencing cataclysms of modernity as its harsh Maoist strictures meet the chaotic flux of globalism. What remains of the Middle Kingdom's ancient cultural riches? And can a Westerner truly understand China's past and present-or the murky waters where the two meet? Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is both a travel memoir and the chronicle of a distinct intellectual shift as one of the most captivating contemporary writers and thinkers begins to engage with the cultures of Asia and the legacies of its interactions with Europe in a newly globalized society. Rendered in English by award-winning translator Ottilie Mulzet, Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is an important work, marking the emergence of Krasznahorkai as a truly global novelist. Praise for Krasznahorkai "The contemporary Hungarian master of the apocalypse." -Susan Sontag "Krasznahorkai delights in unorthodox description; no object is too insignificant for his worrying gaze... He offers us stories that are relentlessly generative and defiantly irresolvable. They are haunting, pleasantly weird, and ultimately, bigger than the worlds they inhabit."-New York Times "Krasznahorkai is an expert with the complexity of human obsessions. Each of his books feel like an event, a revelation."-Daily Beast

A masterpiece of form and fiction as one of our greatest living writers tackles our fears of environmental disaster.

A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF 2024 A PUBLISHERS WEEKY BEST BOOK OF 2024 The gentle giant Florian Herscht has a problem: having faithfully attended Herr K hler's adult education classes in physics, he is convinced that disaster is imminent. And so, he embarks upon a one-sided correspondence with Chancellor Angela Merkel, to convince her of the danger of the complete destruction of all physical matter. Otherwise, he works for the Boss (the head of a local neo-Nazi gang), who has taken him under his wing and gotten him work as a graffiti cleaner and also a one-room apartment in the small eastern German town of Kana. The Boss is enraged by a graffiti artist who, with wolf emblems, is defacing all the various monuments to Johann Sebastian Bach in Thuringia. A Bach fanatic and director of an amateur orchestra, he is determined to catch the culprit with the help of his gang, and Florian has no choice but to join the chase. The situation becomes even more frightening, and havoc ensues, when real wolves are sighted in the area... Written in one cascading sentence with the power of atomic particles colliding, Krasznahorkai's novel is a tour de force, a morality play, a blistering satire, a devastating encapsulation of our helplessness when confronted with the moral and environmental dilemmas we face.

En danderet professor rejser til den øde spanske provins Extremadura, efter han bliver hyret til at skrive noget om egnen. Her falder han over den mystiske historie om de sidste ulve i området, og han beslutter sig for at undersøge sagen nærmere. Det bliver en rejse gennem det golde landskab fyldt med sidespring, misforståelser, fabuleren og ikke mindst masser af ulve. Men hvilken en af dem er den sidste? László Krasznahorkai (f. 1954 i Gyula) er en af Ungarns vigtigste samtidsforfattere, og hans kompromisløse stil og excentriske karakterer har gjort ham kendt og anerkendt både indenfor og udenfor landets grænser. Krasznahorkais værker, der er præget af en blanding af eksistentialisme, nihilisme og sort humor, er i dag oversat til en stor del af verdens sprog, og han har gennem tiden modtaget utallige priser, herunder The Man Booker International Prize i 2015. Forlaget Sisyfos har tidligere udgivet Krasznahorkais romaner ’Modstandens melankoli’ (1989) og ’Satantango’ (1985).

'Baron Wenkcheim's Homecoming is a fitting capstone to Krasznahorkai's tetralogy, one of the supreme achievements of contemporary literature. Now seems as good a time as any to name him among our greatest living novelists.' Paris Review Hailed internationally as perhaps the most important novel of the young twenty-first century, Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming is the culmination of László Krasznahorkai's remarkable and singular career. Nearing the end of his life, Baron Bela Wenckheim decides to return to the provincial Hungarian town of his birth. Having escaped from his many casino debts in Buenos Aires, where he was living in exile, he wishes to be reunited with his high-school sweetheart Marika. What follows is an endless storm of gossip, con men and local politicians, vividly evoking the small town's alternately drab and absurd existence. Spectacular actions are staged, death and the abyss loom, until finally doom is brought down on the unsuspecting residents of the town. 'I've said a thousand times that I always wanted to write just one book. Now, with this novel, I can prove that I really wrote just one book in my life. This is the book - Satantango, Melancholy, War & War, and Baron. This is my one book.' László Krasnahorkai

Baron Wenckheim vender hjem er av internasjonale kritikere blitt hyllet som Krasznahorkais modne mesterverk. Med mørk humor og skarp ironi – og i sine umiskjennelige lange setninger – tegner den ungarske nobelprisfavoritten et uforlignelig, uforglemmelig og nær sagt altomfattende portrett av vår europeiske samtid. «Er det en sørgemarsj? I så fall er det den mest forrykte som noen gang er komponert.» Die ZeitBéla Wenckheim, en tilårskommen aristokrat, er på vei tilbake til den ungarske småbyen han forlot som ung mann. Ryktet løper foran ham, og myndighetene i den lille byen legger storslagne planer for hvordan de skal komme på fote igjen med baronens penger. Det verken borgermesteren, den korrupte politimesteren eller den lokale motorsykkelgjengen – som forsvarer «sanne verdier» – vet, er at baronen er raka fant: Han har flyktet fra Buenos Aires for å slippe unna spillegjeld og fengselsstraff. Dessuten vil han se igjen gymnaskjæresten, Marika. Da baronen til slutt dukker opp, eksploderer den lille byen i kollektivt hysteri, sladder og forviklinger. Men ingenting tar den retningen borgermesteren – eller baronen – hadde tenkt.«Baron Wenckheim vender hjem er enestående og kompromissløs – et mesterverk fra en av vår tids store forfattere.» Juryuttalelse, National Book Award