The Hungarian László Krasznahorkai will receive the Formentor Prize for Literature

Madrid. The Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai will receive the Formentor Prize for Literature on September 27 in Morocco, in a ceremony that will take place at the Barceló Palmeraie Hotel in the city, as announced by the Formentor Foundation, promoter of the awards.

The presentation of this award, whose winner this year was made public last March, is part of the 17th edition of the Formentor Literary Conversations, which will be held until September 29 in Morocco with the motto ‘Geniuses, nomads and Bedouins’.

In this way, a colloquium on Spanish cultural magazines will inaugurate the conference, on Thursday, September 26, with the aim of addressing the dilemmas, challenges and challenges that editors solve in the media of information, analysis and criticism of culture.

As in previous years, attendance at the Literary Conversations is free upon registration, until capacity is reached, and they will once again bring together writers, teachers, critics, editors, journalists and translators committed to the art of conversation.

According to the minutes of the jury, which met last March in Tangier, the Hungarian writer will receive the award “for sustaining the narrative power that envelops, reveals, hides and transforms the reality of the world, for expanding the fictional version of the enigmatic human existence , for summoning the vigorous reading of a complex fabulation and constructing the fascinating labyrinths of the literary imagination.”

“The work of our winner encompasses in its elliptical and delayed evocation the dark, beautiful and melancholic landscapes of the soul, the abrupt cartography of the sinuous human pilgrimage and the secret murmurs of a self-absorbed premonition,” he adds.

In the plot of surprising fictions, László Krasznahorkai’s characters are distinguished by their languid, hidden and curly personalities. In its narrative itinerary, consciousness and adventure, irony and sadness, madness and the sacred, flow to the rhythm of a meditated rumination. The characters are always dense, unpredictable and on the verge of a delirious redemption.

The narrative structures of László Krasznahorkai and his detailed, slow and drawn-out style manifest the creative energy of a literature completely foreign to the industrial influence of entertainment. Over the decades, his work has brought together an international community of readers committed to the artistic tradition of the European novel.

“The works of László Krasznahorkai give us back the virtuous phlegm of reading and contemplation of the strange, solemn, lethargic, dark and voluptuous that beats in the heart of man. Our author thus renews the aesthetic authority of great literature. For everything Therefore, for making readers aware of the legacy of the Magyar language, for restoring the unnoticed dimensions of the imagination and for the virtuosity of his elegant writing, the jury awards the 2024 Formentor Prize for Literature to the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai”, stands out.

He lived in Allen Ginsberg’s apartment

László Krasznahorkai was born on January 5, 1954 in Gyula (Hungary). He studied Law and Hungarian Language and Literature and, after a few years as an editor, became a writer. He left communist Hungary in 1987, when he traveled to West Berlin to obtain a scholarship.

In the early 1990s, he spent long periods of time in Mongolia and China, and later Japan, settings that brought aesthetic and stylistic changes to his writing. While she was writing the novel War and war (1999), traveled through Europe and lived in Allen Ginsberg’s apartment in New York. He now lives in seclusion in the hills of Szentlászló.

His first novel, Soon after (1985) translated as satanic tango, brought him to the center of Hungarian literary life and remains his best-known work. He also highlights Melancholy of resistance (1989), both novels made into films by his friend, the director Béla Tarr.

Other of his works translated into Spanish are: War and war, To the North the mountain, to the South the lake, to the West the road, to the East the river, Isaiah has arrived, And Seiobo descended to Earth, Merciful relationships y the last wolf.

However, in March 2004, the author received the Kossuth Prize from the Hungarian Government, one of the most prestigious in his country, for his entire work; in May 2015, the International Man Booker; in April 2021, the Austrian Prize for European Literature and, in 2024, he was awarded the Formentor Prize for Literature.