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László Krasznahorkai, grim Hungarian author whose family hid Jewish roots, wins literature Nobel

JL;DR SUMMARY Laszlo Krasznahorkai, a renowned Hungarian author whose works embody existential bleakness and stylistic innovation, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish HeritageHungaryNobel PrizePostmodernismKafkaViktor OrbanLaszlo KrasznahorkaiBela Tarr

Places mentioned

Gyula, Békés, Hungary
"Krasznahorkai was born in 1954 in the small town of Gyula, near the Romanian border."
Hungary
"In 1931, as antisemitism was on the rise in Hungary but before the passage of formal anti-Jewish laws in the country, the authors grandfather had changed their family name from Korin to the more native Hungarian-sounding Krasznahorkai."
Sweden
"The Swedish Nobel jury called him a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess."
Budapest, Hungary
"In the socialist era, it was forbidden to mention it, Krasznahorkai has said about his Jewish ancestry."

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Cairo Item ID 63464
Cairo Source ID 42
Retrieved 2025-10-09 18:00:38 UTC
Curated 2025-10-09 19:00:52 UTC