More than a catastrophe, says Krasznahorkai in his first reaction

When the call came from Stockholm, László Krasznahorkai was not in a grand study or surrounded by reporters. He was sitting quietly in the Frankfurt apartment of a sick friend he had come to visit — an ordinary day that suddenly turned extraordinary. “Hello, this is Janian from the Nobel Prize,” came the voice on the other end of the line. “Yes,” Krasznahorkai replied, almost cautiously. Moments later, he was told that he had just been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature. His reaction? “This is more than a catastrophe,” he said with a laugh — a wry nod to Samuel Beckett, who famously described his own Nobel win with the same word. “Beckett’s first words were, ‘What a...