“...I would leave this earth and these stars, because I would take nothing with me, because I've looked into what's coming, and I don't need anything from here.” ― László Krasznahorkai, The World Goes On
László Krasznahorkai wins the Nobel prize in literature 2025
"Often described as postmodern, Krasznahorkai is known for his long, winding sentences, dystopian and melancholic themes, and the kind of relentless intensity that has led critics to compare him to Gogol, Melville and Kafka."
Krasznahorkai (pronounced CRAS-now-hoar-kay), 71, is known for novels featuring lengthy sentences and dark subjects. Susan Sontag once called him a “master of the apocalypse,” and the Hungarian movie director Bela Tarr has adapted several of his novels for the screen.
László Krasznahorkai awarded Nobel Prize in Literature for 'visionary' work that 'reaffirms the power of art'
Krasznahorkai has said of his work: ‘You will never go wrong anticipating doom in my books, any more than you’ll go wrong in anticipating doom in ordinary life.’
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The best books of the week An eye-opening account of the Wall Street crash
Thomas Pynchon is back with a swaggering, hard-boiled caper; a surprising portrait of Tennyson the dashing poet; Cory Doctorow on the problem with online platforms; the billionaire who gave away a fortune; Werner Herzog on truth and fiction; the power of the ‘train wreck’ memoir; Oyinkan Braithwaite’s compelling second novel; and a fast-paced fictionalisation of how the Finns fought off Russia
The lives and minds of writers are at the forefront of this year’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction shortlist, which also offers accounts of the rise of modern terrorism, the story of slavery in the Ottoman Empire and the pilgrimage of a lone wolf across the faultlines of Europe.
The six shortlisted books “have real breadth in terms of subject matter and style”, said chair of judges Robbie Millen, literary editor of The Times and Sunday Times. “We have been delighted by the candour and courage displayed by the sextet, by the wit and scintillating prose, by their confidence and impressive command of their subjects.”
Jason Burke’s The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s , tells the story of the hijackers, hostage takers and far-left revolutionaries who brought political upheaval to the Middle East and Europe, and explores their links to the rise of radical Islamism.
In Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World, Justin Marozzi looks at a long and often ignored episode in history, which the FT’s reviewer praised for its complex yet human account.
Unlike the historical and literary studies elsewhere on the list, Adam Weymouth’s Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe turns to the natural world, tracing the migration of a wolf named Slavc across Slovenia, Austria and Italy, alongside reflections on conservation, environmental policy and immigration.
Half of this year’s shortlist is devoted to books about writers themselves, spanning three different centuries of work. In The Boundless Deep the biographer Richard Holmes, who has been shortlisted twice before for the Baillie Gifford Prize, offers a new insight into the Victorian poet laureate Alfred Tennyson. An FT review described Holmes’ portrayal of the young poet as “a dashing, compelling and mysteriously conflicted figure”.
Also recognised by the prize before is twice longlisted Frances Wilson, whose biography of novelist Muriel Spark, Electric Spark, was described by judges as a “dazzling exploration of the novelist’s mind and character”.
Helen Garner, a recipient of the Australian Society of Authors medal, delves into “unflinching, often unflattering detail” in her diary chronicles How to End a Story: Collected Diaries.
Last year’s winner, Richard Flanagan, declined the £50,000 prize for Question 7 over concerns about the sponsor Baillie Gifford’s links to fossil fuel investments; the sum will instead be donated to a literacy charity chosen by the sponsor.
Alongside Millen, the judging panel also included historian and author, Pratinav Anil; journalist and broadcaster, Inaya Folarin Iman; cultural historian, biographer and novelist, and previous winner of the prize, Lucy Hughes-Hallett; deputy culture editor of The Economist, Rachel Lloyd; and author and biographer, Peter Parker.
The winner will be announced on November 4.
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From a bookseller’s breakdown to a Christian communist sect — the best new debut novels
John Tottenham’s hilarious ‘Service’; Anika Jade Levy’s pitiless ‘Flat Earth’; Caragh Maxwell’s wry ‘Sugartown’; Kate Riley’s surprising ‘Ruth’; and Sam Reid’s paean to ancient hostelries in ‘The Pin Jar’
Situations that would be tragic in life become delightful when burnished by a fine prose style. John Tottenham magically transmutes existential despair, romantic disappointment, ageing, drug use and a despised day job into high comedy in Service (Semiotext(e) $17.99/in the UK from November 6, Tuskar Rock £14.99).
Terminally weary Sean, late forties, is trying to write a novel (this novel, in fact), while working shifts in a bookshop in a rapidly gentrifying area of Los Angeles. The sudden influx of hip youth into a working-class neighbourhood is just one of the things Sean cannot abide, as cheap, authentic bars and eateries close and reopen as gaudy, overpriced facsimiles of their former selves.
Toting their phones, the giddy incomers tumble into his store, the perfect backdrop for their social media posts. Some of them even want books, but Sean quickly discourages that. Pages and pages detail his inability to invent characters or settings, so his masterwork will have to be a novel about a man who works in an LA bookstore who’s trying to write a novel.
A critical local barista offers suggestions Sean struggles to incorporate, such as creating a convincing female character or a sex scene. As the demands of his clientele escalate (Do you have a washroom? Where can I find Kafka? Do you have The Artist’s Way?), Sean is heading for a spectacular crack-up. Service manages to be savage, furious, hilarious and melancholic all at once.
New Yorker Avery may be at the other end of the age spectrum and the country but she is equally adrift in the modern world, and also trying vainly to write. Anika Jade Levy’s Flat Earth (Abacus £14.99/Catapult $26) exudes ennui and sadness, each chapter prefaced by a mordant precis of bizarre fads and news stories to set against its heroine’s apathy and dysfunction.
Fingers constantly bleeding from the smashed glass of her cell phone, Avery is addicted to men who abuse her, sometimes for money; one has carved his initials into her breast. Her much more successful, happy and rich friend Frances is making a film called Flat Earth, about the overlooked and disgruntled (and Trump-voting) across America; Avery joins her listlessly for part of the road trip. There is a glum kind of humour woven into the despair, and the hopelessness is rendered strangely hypnotic in crisp, pitiless prose.
Caragh Maxwell’s Sugartown (Oneworld £12.99) evokes sadness and introspection by way of a garrulous and buttonholing style. Saoirse has returned from London to her roots, “one big soul-sucking plughole of a town” in Ireland, fleeing a failed relationship. This has entailed moving back in with Máire, her opinionated mother, and younger siblings, and taking on an undemanding job in a hardware store in the post-Celtic Tiger economic doldrums. Her only outlet is self-defeating: drug and alcoholic binges with equally low-achieving friends. Maxwell’s lush descriptions of partying surge with underlying angst, yet the attendant misery is always undercut with a wry cynicism: “The overarching theme of the Annual Irish Suffering Olympics was ‘get over yourself, there’s worse off than you’.”
Saoirse also has a more successful best friend, the confident Doireann. A new acquaintance, Charlie, brings the promise of romance, but Saoirse’s demons constantly threaten to resurface and trample the fragments of a life she’s attempting to put together. Thrilling with the fullness of even painful emotion, in Sugartownuncertainty, awkwardness and guilt have never sounded so appealing.
The lead character of Ruth by Kate Riley (Doubleday £16.99/Riverhead $29) suffers from a surfeit of meaning and direction in her life; she is born into an Anabaptist sect of Christian communists, where all property is shared and individuality is frowned upon. Ruth soon learns to tame her natural rebelliousness, which however breaks out in a subversive wit on occasion. As expected, she marries a man she barely knows, who unlovably addresses her as “Mom” from day one.
At this point most readers would expect a lurid tale of abuse and religious hypocrisy, but the sect is more supportive than oppressive. Ruth is a touching tale of a radical experiment in living which, while it limits individual expression and agency, nevertheless offers much that is comforting in return. Riley’s deft prose has surprising angles and hidden spikes.
A paean to ancient hostelries and oral storytelling, Sam Reid’s The Pin Jar (Rough Trade £13.99) pulls the reader deep into the past with its three folk tales from the Sussex Weald, compiled, in the framing device, by an amateur ethnographer and composer who tapes stories and songs he hears from local eccentrics in pubs. Told in dialect and set out as poetry, the title story refers to a method of repelling witches, “Takener” concerns a malevolent nature spirit awoken when a wood is felled for money, and “A Hand in Your Own Undoing” tells of the murder of a local beauty and its dire aftermath. Mine’s a pint!
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