Hungarian Author László Krasznahorkai‘s Novels Offer Stark Warning About Contemporary Europe
BUDAPEST – As Europe grapples with rising nationalism, political polarization, and anxieties about identity, teh novels of Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai are gaining renewed relevance. Known for his lengthy, complex sentences and unsettling narratives, Krasznahorkai’s work provides a prescient and often darkly humorous examination of the precarious political landscape of post-communist Eastern Europe and its reverberations across the continent.
Krasznahorkai’s novels, including early works discovered in 2011 and more recent publications like “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming” (2019) and “Herd 07769” (2024), consistently confront themes of nativism, xenophobia, and the looming threat of societal collapse. Translated into English by Ottilie Mulzet, his fiction doesn’t shy away from “contemporary European reality and its perils, including the tortured dynamics of settlement, movement, and identity.” This makes his work increasingly vital as Europe navigates a period of critically important upheaval and uncertainty.
His novels frequently depict the tensions within small towns-specifically in Hungary and former East Germany-between traditionalists, neo-Nazis, and those seeking order. “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming,” such as, centers on the return of an émigré nobleman to a dilapidated Hungarian town, were he is seen as a potential savior by a populace harboring “often reactionary” hopes. However, the Baron proves to be a disappointment, unable to find solace or redemption amongst his countrymen. The novel, prefaced with the epigraph “Eternity-will last as long as it lasts,” showcases Krasznahorkai’s capacity for tragicomic observation.
Beyond political commentary, Krasznahorkai’s work explores the lives of “visionary obsessives and holy fools”-characters like a moss expert, an archivist convinced of a major literary revelation, and a pianist fixated on piano tuning. These figures, while seemingly eccentric, serve to highlight the fragility of reason and the search for meaning in a world teetering on the brink. Despite the complexity of his prose-described as “swirling sentences, the feverish intellection”-Krasznahorkai’s novels directly address the anxieties and challenges facing Europe today.
