Until not long ago, the literature of László Krasznahorkai (Gyula, 1954) was one of those secret treasures hidden in Eastern European literature. Complex and allegorical, determined by his total war on the point - "continuous discourse is not artificial, artificial are the short sentences," he maintains - with characters marked by continuous failure and plots that travel between disillusionment and hope where miracles, apocalypses, and false prophets abound, the Hungarian's novels - the latest being Baron Wenckheim Returns Home (Acantilado) - are true tour de force that have earned him the status of a recurring Nobel Prize candidate.
For now, he has won the Formentor Prize 2024, an award "whose novelistic history draws attention to the fact that there still exists a non-commercial literature," he tells EL MUNDO before being honored in Marrakech. "This award makes me believe that it is possible to defend, without any romantic and sentimental pose, the increasingly withered right to elevated expression."