Nobel Prize Conversations

Translating the infinite sentence

Listen to the translator of 2025 literature laureate László Krasznahorkai, Daniel Gustafsson, in a podcast conversation with Adam Smith as they explore the literary world created by Krasznahorkai.

Podcast transcript

László Krasznahorkai: In my garden, there is a huge, more than hundred years long oak, and I try to understand somehow what he or she or it thinks.

Adam Smith: That’s the voice of László Krasznahorkai, the 2025 Nobel Prize laureate in literature, recorded when he visited Sweden to receive his Nobel Prize in December 2025.

Karin Svensson: And we’ll hear his voice throughout this podcast, but the format is a little bit different than what we usually do.

Smith: Krasznahorkai is renowned for being a very private person, and in the most gracious way possible, he declined the invitation to do a recording for this podcast saying that writing is like everyday life, a private matter, and he feels embarrassed talking about it, which I find rather refreshing in an age when people are so happy to talk about themselves and everything.

Svensson: But we managed to get someone who has almost the same level of expertise in Krasznahorkai’s writing as the man himself.

Smith: Yes, that’s right. It was an absolute delight to speak to Daniel Gustafsson, his translator into Swedish and also an author. And yes, his reflections on Krasznahorkai’s writing and way of thinking and his thoughts about the art of translation were all absolutely fascinating.

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Svensson: You’re listening to Nobel Prize Conversations. I’m Karin Svensson.

Smith: And I’m Adam Smith.

Svensson: And this podcast was produced in cooperation with Fundacion Ramon Areces. First, we’ll hear about how a Nobel Prize in Literature doesn’t just affect the laureate, but everyone who has a stake in their writing.

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Smith: There must be a sense of ownership there that you must feel, especially in your case, the Nobel Prize is a Swedish prize and you’re the translator into Swedish. There must be a feeling of excitement and pride when that announcement happens back in October and carries through to the ceremonies in December. How did you feel about it all?

Gustafsson: It was kind of double for me actually because I was in the middle of finishing my own book. I had taken a pause from translation, really, to concentrate on my own writing. But I had this feeling that he might get the prize this year. I don’t know why. They always collect experts on literature at the National Swedish Radio so I was sitting there outside the studio waiting with other journalists and writers. When it was announced that László Krasznahorkai got the prize, I wasn’t that surprised. But I also knew that it would ruin my entire half year of writing. Which for the first moments were a bit of a shock, really, from that point of view. But then I just dove into it, let’s say. I did a lot of interviews because nobody really managed to reach László Krasznahorkai personally. So I did a lot of interviews and a lot of talks about his writing. I did a very quick translation of his latest book, The Security of the Hungarian Nation. I did that in a month, and his Nobel lecture, which was quite lengthy, quite complicated in a very short time. So it was a time of exhaustion, but also joy, of course. I was happy. He’s a very good writer, and I think the Swedish Academy did a good choice this year.

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Svensson: Daniel Gustafsson is a translator from English and Hungarian into Swedish. He has translated five of László Krasznahorkai’s novels, including Herscht 07769, which consists of a single sentence spanning 375 pages. Gustafsson is also a novelist in his own rights and teaches creative writing at the University of Gothenburg.

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Smith: Do you have a background in Hungarian as well as Swedish and English?

Gustafsson: No, I don’t have a background in Hungary at all, but I was married to a woman who was born here in Sweden with Hungarian parents, and I got very interested in Hungary when I was around 25. We went down there and I studied Hungarian for some odd reason. But it paid out 30 years later with this Nobel Prize. No, but I was into literature. I studied literature and also was into writing and stuff like that. So I just tried to combine these things with translating. I happened to know a publisher at the bigger publishing house who needed a translator for a Hungarian book. And they wanted to try a new, like, younger translator. I was around, like, 35 at that point. So I started to translate for them, and then Krasznahorkai came up. That’s how I started to translate him, really. Of course, I knew about Krasznahorkai and I, I bought his books and tried to read him, and it was terribly hard. When I was a student and so on, he was quite famous, at least among people interested in literature, intellectuals, and so on. I did actually try to translate the book before I started translating professionally. So, yeah, I had this kind of connection, because I really liked his prose a lot.

Smith: Do you find that Swedish is a good fit with Hungarian? Are you easily able to make the exchange, if you see what I mean?

Gustafsson: No. Hungarian is a kind of special language, as you might know. It’s Eugrek, so it’s not connected with Western European languages or even Slavic languages. So it’s a totally different story and you have to work a lot with the order of words in the sentences and so on and the grammar is totally different from the Swedish, which is much more similar to German or even English. So it’s a very different process. I translate also from English to Swedish, so it’s not easy. I wouldn’t say that, but you have more for free, like, in regards of grammar and so on. But that’s also the beauty about translating from Hungarian, that you have to rephrase so much and you have to change the order of the words in long sentences and so on to make it work in Swedish. So it’s a challenge, but it’s very rewarding when you kind of feel that you succeeded somehow to accomplish something.

Smith: There must be so many challenges. I mean, one obvious one is this incredibly prolonged sentence structure that Krasznahorkai uses with so little punctuation and sort of flow of consciousness. Is that something that is particularly well-suited to Hungarian writing and is hard to carry through to Swedish in particular?

Gustafsson: I think it’s a question of the Hungarian language from one perspective that it’s very flexible and they have a tendency to also in ordinary speech to stretch their sentences. It’s funny, some conversations are more like, it’s not like a dialogue. It’s like two monologues that are if you have two talkative persons from Hungary. So from one point of view, it’s very different from Swedish literary language, let’s say. It’s a big variation, of course, in Swedish literature, but there is this tendency towards long sentences in Hungarian, like, let’s say higher educated literature or whatever you want to call it, like Péter Nádas and Péter Esterházy and those kinds of writers are really using these possibilities that the Hungarian language opens up for in a way. So of course, it is a challenge to transform that into a language that works in Swedish, where these kinds of sentences are more rare in literature. And they might look a bit elistist, whatever you want to call it. That has been the big challenge with László Krasznahorkai to render his flow of language into a readable Swedish version of it.

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Svensson: László Krasznahorkai was set to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a lawyer before he turned to literature. He received the 2025 Nobel Prize for his compelling and visionary oeuvre, that in the midst of apocalyptic terror reaffirms the power of art. Krasznahorkai was born in 1954 in the town of Gyula near the Romanian border, a place that sparked his imagination as a child.

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Krasznahorkai (recording): My first experiences of all the human beings and about the legendary figures in the town played a huge role in my life later. But this wonderful fairytale small town later disappeared in the past. I lost this town because when I went back, when I was an art, I lived somewhere in nearby Budapest. And I went back, I tried to find the origin, small town, but that town was never. And I tried to find, but here was a street and the street was also the name was the same. Also, the trees were the same. But that was not what I wanted to find and to get back. That was a huge crisis in my life, that I lost my home. And but more, this town now after this Nobel Prize organised a huge event, the so-called Nobel meeting Gyula. Gyula is the name of this small town. A lot of readings, official and civil things, big pictures on the streets. Thank you very much to you. It’s very kind. Very, very kind. But the fact is I lost my original tone.

Smith: So, a longing for a home that no longer exists, really. But Krasznahorkai’ has spoken of art as a response to humanity’s general feeling of longing and word. He used lostness. How do you reflect on that?

Gustafsson: Well, yeah, when you follow his biography, also as he talks about here, that he really wanted to get out of Hungary in the ’80s and experience something outside this closed box, as it were. And I think that art has always been something very close to his idea of God, really, or some kind of religious area or a place in life. So there’s one book which really dives into this subject called Seiobo There Below in English, which is a really beautiful book about man’s relation to art in different periods in different parts of the world also. So it seems to be somewhere where he really feels at home in life. Not just in the physical life, but also in this other realm of reality, which is art.

Smith: There’s another clip which we should play that relates also to this feeling of moving away from Hungary. Let’s listen to it.

Krasznahorkai (recording): When I could leave Hungary, I changed my place. First, because I was very curious that the sky is blue, really. Before I just read about it. Because under this Soviet time, we lost the colours. And I saw in Austria or in Germany or in France, Spain, Italy that the grass is green. What a wonderful green is.

Smith: It’s very evocative of the sense of freedom, I suppose that came from the move, but still no home was found in a way.

Gustafsson: Yeah, I think he says in this interview, um, that he’s never looking for somewhere to go. He just has this urge to leave a place when he gets tired of it, I guess. Maybe this is because of what happened in Hungary in his youth, that he was ruthless, in a sense, in his own world. So yeah, I know that he has been moving around a lot and that he still lives in several places, even today.

Smith: But as you say, has found a home in art, which is, I suppose, infinitely transferrable.

Gustafsson: Exactly. And I also know that he loves music, really, and was an amateur musician when he was younger. And he always takes some little instrument with him or buys an instrument when he’s somewhere, flute in Japan or whatever and tries to play on it. So he’s always very close to music in a way. I think it’s also something that you feel when you read him, hopefully in a good translation as well. It comes through that he has this musicality in his language that is kind of orchestrated like a melody or a song or something like that. That is not only information. It’s not only prose. It’s also has a rhythm and a melody.

Smith: Let’s hear him talk about that rhythm.

Krasznahorkai (recording): And when I have to correct my earlier book, I try in my head to write one sentence. These sentences became always longer and longer because if you have some very important, what you want to say, want to tell to somebody. For example, I love you, but in the last 20 year, I loved you, but I have encouraged to confess this. Or I hate you, but in the last 20 years, I had encouraged to confess it. And suddenly, I can speak. You cannot make a very beautiful small sentences: I hate you but I hadn’t courage to tell him. No. I hate you because… And my musical background played a very big role. The matter of passion, you cannot cut. This is a line. Of course, a long sentence has also its structure and is very important, of course. So years after years, I tried to write from the small something about the word.

Smith: It sounds very much like a composer elaborating on a theme in his mind or her mind.

Gustafsson: Well, from a translator’s point of view, it is actually, it has been for me a big help, his musicality, because you really have to find the rhythm. And as I said earlier, to rephrase this or to reshape this into Swedish, in my case. So the long sentences, theoretically, they seem to be a problem in a way, but he uses comma where he could put a full stop. So it’s really like sentences put together, but it creates this flow. And it’s possible to render that into an enjoyable Swedish, I hope, in my case. But it is a help for me. I have translated other Hungarian writers who write long sentences, but they’re more abstract, more philosophical. They would jump from one thing to another. But there is always like this, as he says, this compositional tendency in his prose that makes it somehow easier. So it’s all held together by the language in a way. So that’s an advantage in his case.

Smith: It sounds like it’s a very creative task for you as well, and that you have to somehow have that rhythm playing in your head as you’re doing this. You have to be in for want of a better phrase, in the zone. Or in the groove, perhaps.

Gustafsson: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s true. You used to have to follow it. But then the trouble is that you have to change every sentence. You have to toss the words around to change the word order and so on. But I think I’ve found a way of doing that much faster now than when I first started with him. Then it was a shock. It was like looking into the abyss in a way. When I started translating the melancholio resistance. But yes, I think I’ve found some way of doing it now. It’s not only about the language, but also the themes that he chooses. That he’s also very fascinated by mathematics, physics, quantum physics and so on. So there is always a lot of facts to be checked.

Smith: And what sort of question do you pose to Krasznahorkai when you’re in the midst of something and a problem comes up? You’re bewildered by something.

Gustafsson: Yeah. Usually very small practical stuff. Like with all writers, I do these things myself. You get carried away when you write. And you don’t really think about the logic somehow. Someone enters a room, looks right, but the thing he or she sees is on the left, you know? Very simple, practical things usually. So I try to narrow down my questions to the most essential ones where I have had trouble understanding really what happens in a scene or just like in a moment like that when somebody walks on a street and sees something. But usually his replies are quite cryptical. Sometimes they’re crystal clear. Sometimes they’re more cryptical. So, yeah. But it’s funny to have this connection with him. It’s great.

Smith: Yeah. Must be lovely, even if it still leaves you feeling bewildered.

Gustafsson: Yeah, exactly. Sometimes you don’t know really.

Smith: He himself describes very beautifully a moment when he was captivated by one particular book. Let’s listen.

Krasznahorkai (recording): Without Kafka, I will be never a writer. The reason was that I have a brother six years older than me. And I was a little child. He was a big boy. And he read and his friend circle of friends read a lot literature. And I wanted to understand what they talk about the books about, for example, Kafka, Dostoevsky, the Russian literature, the American literature, European literature. And I want to get closer to this circle to be among this big boys. One night, my brother was a personal bookshelf. And I chose a book that was unfortunately or fortunately ‘The Castle’ by Franz Kafka. I could be maybe 12 or 11 years old. I read the whole book from the beginning of this. I couldn’t understand what about this? What is here the story? And what is this castle? Why not to grow up? That was absolute error rate. A secret for me. I got closer to this circle. But I never could understand this castle. ‘The castle’ by Kafka remained for me until today the most beautiful secret in the literature for me. That’s why I told you that, without this castle, I never been a writer.

Smith: It’s such a beautiful idea discovering this literary secret, unintelligible secret when you’re 12.

Gustafsson: Exactly.

Smith: It reminds me of another laureate from 2025, Omar Yaghi, who was awarded the chemistry prize. And when he was a fairly similar age, living as a refugee in Jordan, he discovered pictures of molecules in a chemistry textbook in the library and had no idea apparently what they meant. But though they were beautiful and that they were some kind of secret he discovered. He kept it secret and determined to find out what these were. That led him on a path to chemistry and everything that followed. So it’s funny that two laureates from the same year should share this secret discovery as young boys.

Gustafsson: But it’s really interesting that he usually says that he didn’t want to become a writer. So maybe that this Kafka, the literature or the language of Kafka kind of became something that he couldn’t get out of his head, if you want to put it like that. And that his first book is like, I don’t know, process of that. I think he says in this interview as well, which we listened to parts of that, he never wanted to become a writer. He wanted to write one book. The rest of his books are corrections of the first book because he wasn’t satisfied with it. So yeah, from that point of view, this first meeting with literature when you’re 11 or 12 to read Kafka, it’s really unimaginable what it would do to me. I must have read him much later in life when I was at least 16 or 17 or 18 even.

Smith: Yeah. So interesting that it wasn’t off-putting but it sowed these seeds of dissatisfaction, but it, nevertheless, they worried away. They worried away until something had to happen. On that correction, as you say, he speaks about that in the interview. Let’s listen to the clip where he talks about longtime collaborator Béla Tarr.

Krasznahorkai (recording): Film director Béla Tarr. Because of him, because he wanted to make a film after this Sátántangó. I had to read again the book. I experienced this is not the book what I wanted to write. I have to make something better, not to deal with this old text. Rather, it’s better to write a new one. But I was very innocent and I didn’t count with the fact that if you write again a book. Because after that, The Melancholy of Resistance, my second novel, Béla Tarr wanted once more to make a movie after this novel. I had to read once more again the second novel and I thought what is it? What to do? I couldn’t find an exit from this cage, you know? And I went always down, down, down. And when a policeman asked me, “What is your job? What do you do?” “I am a writer. So I became a writer. Always correct what I couldn’t solve in a book. I’m actually a corrector of myself in my whole life.

Smith: Exactly as you said.

Gustafsson: Yeah, it’s an interesting angle on being a writer. I don’t know most writers probably wouldn’t phrase it like that, but he does.

Smith: Yes. It’s fascinating. It’s so unusual. Do you see it as you translate? As you read him, do you see this endless striving towards some kind of perfection?

Gustafsson: Yes and no. Maybe you can see this in the tendency in his later books to write longer and longer sentences in a way. It started with a small book called The Last Wolf, which is like a long short story. A novella, 100 pages in one sentence. I think this is one of his struggles to the perfection of language in a way, to the perfection of writing this sentence that would say everything about this work of art. But at the same time, his stories are also full of narrative in a way. It’s not an abstract art that he’s creating. He always writes about the subject, kind of big subjects also. Things that you can relate to as a reader, although the protagonists may be very far from your own life. So I don’t think he’s correcting himself in that sense when it comes to storytelling or the narrative part of his books, perhaps when it comes to language. But he’s constantly developing, I would say, as a writer, which is also very fascinating since he started off with ‘Sátántangó’, which is a very complex novel from many point of views. Maybe he’s working towards some even simpler style today.

Smith: And that would be a traditional path to follow for many artists. But as you say, it’s a very particular choice of word to call that correction as opposed to development or something.

Gustafsson: Yeah.

Smith: That would be more standard phrasing for that process. Very self-critical. And he mentions here his relationship with Béla Tarr, the film director, which has obviously been extraordinarily formative for him. What role do the films play in your work? Or do you just work with the text and not think about anything else?

Gustafsson: Yeah. I have seen Béla Tarr’s films, of course. But they are very peculiar in the sense that they only work with image in a way. They can be very silent, like the opening scene of Sátántangó is like 16 minutes or something. Some cows walking on a muddy field or at a farm. And Krasznahorkai’s prose is the opposite of that. It’s only language. It’s a lot of talking. It’s very flamboyant in a way. Béla Tarr’s films are very strict in one sense. It’s so much about aesthetics. It’s so much about the image. It’s like painting in a way. It’s fascinating that somebody wanted to make films out of Krasznahorkai’s writings in the first place. And that Tarr makes it into a new kind of artwork in a way. He’s not following them, trying to make them as they were as books, but using them as inspiration more for a new artwork, really.

Smith: Another unusual definition or self-definition that Krasznahorkai uses is to talk about his role as a moderator of ideas and people. So let’s listen to this next clip.

Krasznahorkai (recording): To find a way between two people, between two thinking away, between two words, to find a way, a relationship, to be able to find a way between two events, between two fates. My role is much more practical actually to understand what he think and why he or she or it thinks something. A tree, for example. In my garden in Hungary in my house, there is a huge, more hundred years long oak. Nowadays, I sit a lot on my terrace there and I see this oak huge. You cannot imagine how huge is it. I try to understand somehow what he or she or it thinks.

Smith: Again, a beautiful image. He is in a way acting as a moderator trying to cajole ideas and comment out of people and places and things. How does that marry with your view of him as a writer?

Gustafsson: I think it’s a very good phrasing when he calls himself a moderator, because many of his books are really these choir works in a way with different voices. So there are usually a lot of protagonists in his book. One or two who are more central, but also a big gallery of other players in his stories. And you somehow, I don’t know, it’s fascinating how he does that, but he zooms into different people, then zooms out and zooms into another person. They all have their own specific way of talking, for example. He’s really a master of that, being that moderator to put forward different persons, different voices in his books. So they become like a patchwork of different intellects or different minds. I would say that it’s a very good description of his role as a writer in a way, to be the moderator.

Smith: It places the writer in the background, in a way. The moderator is always the least important person on the stage, if you see what I mean. But on the other hand, they do have a choreographing, a sort of conductor’s role. It’s quite a humble view of the writer’s role.

Gustafsson: Yeah. But still, you know, he’s also as a puppet master if you want to put it like that. I think none of his texts are in first person, so it’s always third person perspective. So there is always actually someone who looks at this literary world from somewhere who gives the different characters their voices, distributes the word, so to speak, between them. So there is this writer’s position in his books who knows more about the characters and the world than the reader does. But he makes it in a fascinating way. So you don’t really think about the writer when you read. You’re drawn into this world in a very peculiar way.

Smith: Yes, a great art to remove yourself from the conversation.

Gustafsson: Yeah.

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Smith: We though it might be fun to play the whole banquet speech. I know you’ve heard it. It leads in so many different directions and we might just pick up a few strands from it. So should we play the banquet speech and then think about what it all means?

Gustafsson: Sure.

Krasznahorkai (recording): 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 Das Schloss 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.

Smith: There’s an awful lot in there.

Gustafsson: Yeah.

Smith: When you first heard it, what jumped out at you most of all?

Gustafsson: Well, I was actually sitting at the banquet, so I enjoyed it live, so to speak. I was totally fascinated as well, maybe because it was so open-hearted in a way that he was so profound in mixing kind of very personal memories with, you know, as you say, there’s a awful lot in it with Siddharta and Renaissance and Kafka, all of that. Because he seldom gives interviews and seldom speaks about his personal life. But some of these things were so touching in a way. And perhaps for me, the most, as a translator, of course, of his books and as we talked about how he produces literature in a very special way. This short story that he gives about how he sits on his brother’s shoulders on the way home from kindergarten and that rendered him another way of looking at life. So this new perspective, which I think is true for his art or his works in a way that they somehow puts a new perspective on the world because of the of the perspective that he chooses in his books. That for me was a very beautiful memory, in a way, which also says something about his way of being an artist.

Smith: It was a clever speech because there was something there for everyone. I mean, in my case, I had a particular thrill when he mentioned Patty Smith because for many years I used to go to sleep listening to a records when I was a teenager. We could all find our point of connection with that speech.

Gustafsson: And also the way he mixes it all up. There is no chronology or anything. It’s just, as it comes to his mind in a way, the most important things in his life, you could say. Both regarding his personal life and the art. You can sense that also in his writings that he’s not only attracted by the big geniuses, but also I think there’s a fascination in his books about low culture or genre culture in a way. So you have all these almost like slapstick moments in his books. You have these detective story, intrigue sort of threads in his books, action film scenes almost. So also his speech gave some kind of insight into that, that he’s also interested in popular culture, not only in the high culture.

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Krasznahorkai (recording): Your excellences, ladies and gentlemen, please follow me into the depths of the pure music of an unknown language. (Hungarian)

Smith: There you heard a snippet from his Nobel Prize lecture, which was in Hungarian. He conveys a negative view of what humanity has achieved. Let me just try reading. I’m afraid it’s a rather long paragraph though.

Gustafsson: I’m used to long paragraphs.

Smith: For sure. But it would just be nice to have you comment on it afterwards. (Quote from the lecture) “Finally you flew into space, forsaking the birds, then you flew up to the Moon, and you took your first steps there, you invented such weapons that could blow up the entire Earth many times over, and then you invented sciences in such a flexible manner thanks to which tomorrow takes precedence over and mortifies what can only be imagined today, and you created art from the cave drawings up until Leonardo’s Last Supper, from the magical dark enchantment of rhythm up until Johann Sebastian Bach, finally, in accordance with historical progress, you, with complete and utter suddenness, began to believe in nothing at all anymore, and, thanks to the devices that you yourself invented, destroying imagination, you are left with only short-term memory now, and so you have abandoned the noble and common possession of knowledge and beauty and the moral good.”

Gustafsson: Tough words.

Smith: It’s devastating.

Gustafsson: Yeah.

Smith: Of humanity’s current achievements and of human what would be defined as progress almost.

Gustafsson: But I guess it’s his worldview in a way in a nutshell. And you can see it already in his first novel, which is about society and the failures of society and the failures of human interaction. But at the same time, there’s still this love of the human being in a way in his works. And the little person, you know, the small, the individual in this big machinery, which is society and culture, which kind of destroys the world and destroys people. So I would say there is still some kind of hope in a way. This speech was very dark and maybe he’s moving into a new direction, which is much more critical than his own works. But his last book is also connected to this speech in a way, ‘The Security of the Hungarian Nation’. But it has some kind of hope in it, although it’s pretty dark in the human interaction in the friendship between two people who are very different, for example, in that book. So yeah, he said in some interview that he is in Hungarian, it’s like a compound. He’s against society. I don’t know really what that means, but he’s a big critic of all this kind of systems, systems of organising society. And that it always almost leads to repression and subordination and so on. At the same time, his books are funny. They put somehow the finger on the place of the individual in this big destructive machinery that we live in, which we call the world. I think this speech epitomises this somehow.

Smith: Yes. Somehow against everything that constrains imagination.

Gustafsson: Exactly.

Smith: And referring back to the banquet speech. And when he speaks to Patti Smith, he identifies her ability never to submit to anyone.

Gustafsson: Exactly.

Smith: Refusal to be constrained.

Gustafsson: Exactly.

Smith: It’s powerful stuff. But maybe that paragraph should be read out at every conversation I find myself in about the potential of AI to transform our world.

Gustafsson: I mean, yeah. It makes you think.

Smith: It truly does.

Gustafsson: Makes you wonder.

Smith: I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to speak to you about all this.

Gustafsson: I’m very happy that you had these quotes and questions that led us onto interesting stuff.

MUSIC

Svensson: Well, that really helped take the sting out of the disappointment of not getting the Krasznahorkai interview, doesn’t it?

Smith: I think it worked out very well. One might question the value anyway of talking to somebody about private things that they don’t want to speak about. Could be a bit like talking to that tree in his garden.

Svensson: Well, there is an argument to be made for readers being the best judges of books and he is definitely a dedicated reader of these books.

Smith: Most definitely. And of course, there’s a whole school of thought that says you shouldn’t bother with the author at all, as you start and finish with the text.

Svensson: I’d argue against that with the fact that we had such a lovely episode with Nobel Prize laureate in literature Jon Fosse a couple of years back.

Smith: Oh, yes. One can’t help but be excited by getting anywhere closer to the author and the text, of course. And I think that this one with a mix of voices worked very nicely. And I came out liking Krasznahorkai and liking Gustafsson. And we’ve all been set our homework in a way.

Svensson: Yes. Let’s go and read.

Smith: Yes, exactly.