László Krasznahorkai’s speech at the Nobel Prize banquet, 10 December 2025

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellences, Dear Laureates, Ladies and
Gentlemen, I wish to thank the Swedish Academy, and the Nobel Foundation!

Thank you!

I thank all of my publishers and translators, I thank the building of the Swedish Academy and the dear light falling into that room as the final decision was being made in the awarding of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature,

And I give my thanks to Uncle Kerekes, sexton of the Gyula Romanian Orthodox church and cobbler, who is no longer among the ranks of the living, as the precise time of his death had come,

I give my thanks to my friend Jóska Pálnik, who told me, on the second stair of the Water Slide Pool in 1960, how babies are made, and under the grievous weight of this revelation I wanted to die,

I give my thanks to Franz Kafka, whose novel Der Schoss I read when I was twelve years old so that I would be accepted in the circle of my brother, six years older than me; and so my fate was sealed,

I give my thanks to the first thirty-one girls with whom I fell fatally in love, but especially to Márti Klinkovics,

To Ernő Szabó and Imre Simonyi, unknown poets of Gyula, whom I have always admired, and who bore my admiration in a manner worthy of a man,

To Péter Hajnóczy, the most staggering among Hungarian short story writers, who succumbed in his struggle with his phantasms, and thus is no longer among the ranks of the living,

I give my thanks to the artists of Classical Greece,

To the Italian Renaissance,

To Attila József, the Hungarian poet who showed the magical power of words,

To Fyodor Mihailovitch Dostoyevskij,

To my older brother, who often carried me home from kindergarten, because of which I became infinitely grateful to him, as he showed me that there could be another way of looking at the world, not just that which is given,

To William Faulkner,

To the city of Kyoto,

To Thomas Pynchon, beloved friend, to whom I owe deep gratitude,

To Johann Sebastian Bach, for the Divine,

To Patti Smith, for she is the eternal warning: never submit to anyone,

To the voices of Agnes Baltsa, Natalie Dessay, Jennifer Larmore, Monserrat Caballe, Teresa Berganza and Emma Kirkby,

To Béla Tarr, who created colours by making them disappear, because in his great films he tried to speak as the sinner who nevertheless, with all his sins, must still be loved,

To Allen Ginsberg, the friend who is no longer among the ranks of the living, because the time of his death had come,

To the literati of Imperial China,

To Max Seebald, the marvellous writer and friend who is no longer among the ranks of the living, as he gazed for too long at one single blade of grass in the meadow,

To the last wolf in Extremadura,

To nature, that was created,

To Prince Siddhartha,

To the Hungarian language,

To God.

Translated by Ottilie Mulzet