Nobel Prize Winning Author László Krasznahorkai
László Krasznahorkai, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, learned of his Jewish father at age 11.
The Nobel Prize jury described the 71-year-old Hungarian author as "a great epic writer in the central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess."
Krasznahorkai's family hid his Jewish roots from him until he turned 11, due to the rampant antisemitism in Hungary in 1931, which led his grandfather to change their family name from Korin to Krasznahorkai.
I am half Jewish, but if things carry on in Hungary as they seem likely to do, I’ll soon be entirely Jewish.
Krasznahorkai used the name Korin for the Hungarian archivist protagonist in his 1999 novel War and War.
Author's summary: Nobel Prize winner László Krasznahorkai's Jewish roots were hidden from him.