László Krasznahorkai (Gyula, 1954), the Hungarian writer behind works such as the emblematic Tango satánico (1985) and Melancholia de la resistance (1989), brought to the big screen by filmmaker Béla Tarr, will receive the Formentor Prize for Literature 2024.
The jury, meeting at the Barceló Hotel in Tangier (Morocco) this weekend, from where they made their verdict public, wanted to recognize the work of the author, one of the most read and translated in his language, of “sustaining the power narrative that envelops, reveals, hides and transforms the reality of the world”, as well as its ability to “build the fascinating labyrinths of the literary imagination.”
His work “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,” indicates the public record this Saturday, in which he also makes reference to the characteristic characters that come out of the author’s mind, who are distinguished by their “languid, hidden and curly personality” and are “always dense, unpredictable and on the verge of a delirious redemption.”
The jury, made up of Berta Vías Mahou, Dulce María Zúñiga, José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec, Andrés Ibáñez and its president, the writer and journalist Basilio Baltasar, also highlights that the works of the Hungarian writer “return to us the virtuous phlegm of reading and the contemplation of the strange, solemn, lethargic, dark and voluptuous that beats in the heart of man” and concludes that the winner “thus renews the aesthetic authority of great literature.”
Krasznahorkai has always been linked to the world of letters. He studied law and language and literature in Hungary and worked for a few years as an editor before devoting himself fully to writing, his true passion.
In 1987, he was forced to turn his life around and traveled to West Berlin in order to leave the communist regime behind. He would not live there permanently, as some time later he spent long periods in Mongolia, China and Japan. Some trips and experiences that would be reflected in his pages, with new scenarios, as well as aesthetic and stylistic changes in his writing.
His most recent work translated into Spanish is Merciful Relations (2023), eight stories tinged with his characteristic black humor and melancholy that invite the reader to question human illusions, perfidy, betrayal and distrust.
