His novels transport readers to fictional worlds that, while dark, absolutely shimmer thanks to the writer’s luminous prose and narrative capabilities. Why, one might ask, would I want to read such depressing stuff?īut to neglect Krasznahorkai’s novels simply for the sake of avoiding gloom would be a mistake. He is infamous for his bleak outlook on life, claiming in a 2012 interview that human beings most likely will not last another 200 years thanks to the accumulating failures of civilization. The writer himself, whom Susan Sontag called “the Hungarian master of the apocalypse,” has a rather phantomlike appearance and piercing stare in his bio photos. Lengthy sentences form rivers of black ink that overflow into dense paragraphs, while a fog of melancholy permeates his settings and the lives of his sullen if not downright miserable characters. For a reader new to Krasznahorkai’s work, this might seem surprising upon opening one of his books. Three of his books have been translated into English to much acclaim, with a fourth soon on the way. In the last few years, the work of contemporary Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai has undergone a small explosion of sorts in the English-reading world. In the latest installment of our Recommended Reads series, professor Jeff Frawley recommends Satantango by László Krasznahorkai.
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