That Christmas – it was almost 20 years ago – I came back from America with news. My friend Daniel Medin had recommended two books to me, both by the Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, one called War and War and the other The Melancholy of Resistance. We had also watched some Béla Tarr films, whose screenplays had been written by Krasznahorkai. The sense of slow, seething menace in the film Werckmeister Harmonies, based on The Melancholy of Resistance, and the lack of easy psychology and obvious motive in the film, the camera moving like a cat, made it exciting, but not as exciting as the two novels.

Krasznahorkai, I noticed, loved the snaking sentence, the high-wire act, mild panic steering towards a shivering fear felt by his characters, followed, in clause after clause, by fitful realisations and further reasons for gloom or alarm, and then, with just a comma in between, ironic (and even comic) responses to what comes next into the mind. These extraordinary sentences had been translated by the poet George Szirtes with considerable rhythmic energy.

Krasznahorkai – who this week was awarded the Nobel prize in literature – is concerned with limits, with what can happen if language is pushed further than its own decorous rules might suggest. Or what can happen if consciousness itself is rendered as infinite in its systems and capable of doubling back and feeding on itself before it edges forward again. Or what can happen if knowledge, or action, or memory, or voice, are each incapable of being easily tamed by narrative. For this reason, he is, as a storyteller, fascinated by extremes, by the possibility of apocalypse.

It would be a mistake to read the menace in his work as either political or coming from nowhere. His imagination feeds on real fear and real violence; he has a way of making fear and violence seem all the more real and present, however, by removing them from a familiar context. He places them in a dark context of his own choosing. In this way, he stands closer to Kafka than to Beckett, but he is close to neither in his interest and delight in verbal pyrotechnics.

In 2006, when I came home all enthusiastic about his work, he still had no UK publisher. I had read the books in the US editions published by New Directions. The view in London was that he was too difficult; no publisher could take the risk. In response to this, with the literary agent Peter Straus, I set up Tuskar Rock Press, which, using Profile Books as the parent publisher, aims to publish writers who have been overlooked by other UK houses.

Once we acquired the rights to Krasznahorkai’s books, the task was to make them better known. At the Edinburgh Book festival in 2011, when he appeared, I saw that we were pushing an open door. The audience contained serious young readers, admirers of Tarr’s films, who were already familiar with these novels. All we had to do was find more of them.

In person, Krasznahorkai is thoughtful, almost shy, soft-spoken, unfailingly polite. He is not talkative or outgoing. Thus, when I prepared to interview him at the London Review Bookshop in 2012, I wondered how he would respond to questions about his background and the roots of his inspiration.

Not well, is the answer. Or maybe the answer is that there was something wrong with one of the questions.

In retrospect, I can see that he did say some interesting things. For example, about his novel Sátántangó: “I had to write only this book and no more. You try to write only one book and put everything you want to say in one book.”

Before 1989, he said: “Hungary was an absolutely unreal, crazy country. Abnormal and unbearable. After 1989, it became normal and unbearable.” In what he called “Old Hungary”, there was “very big misery – the mood was unbelievably sad and hopeless”.

He was not worried about finding readers. “Most of us need only 10, maybe six on a bad day.”

The problem arose when I asked him about God, about what it meant to write a novel that moved beyond the secular, beyond the domestic or the finite, reaching towards some larger space. “Hmmmm,” he said. And then repeated: “Hmmmm.” His comic timing could not have been better. He looked at me mournfully and said: “The question is wonderful, but I couldn’t answer. It’s too difficult for me. I’m not that clever.”

It took Szirtes, who joined him on the platform, to deal with the issue: “I know that world more, but it’s a visionary world – a visionary world looking for order. The characters are not looking for God, but looking for their place.”

When it came to the time for audience questions, Krasznahorkai seemed relieved. And then he joined his hands together and looked up at the ceiling, half shaman, half shy showman, and as though he were praying for deliverance, he said he was happy to answer questions: “Only I beg you, nothing about God.”

The Nobel prize in literature for 2025 has been awarded to the Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, the Swedish Academy has announced.

The academy cited the 71-year-old’s “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”.

Krasznahorkai is known for his dystopian, melancholic novels, which have won numerous prizes, including the 2019 National Book award for translated literature and the 2015 International Booker prize. Several of his works, including his novels Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been adapted into feature films.

“I am deeply glad that I have received the Nobel prize – above all because this award proves that literature exists in itself, beyond various non-literary expectations, and that it is still being read,” said Krasznahorkai. “And for those who read it, it offers a certain hope that beauty, nobility, and the sublime still exist for their own sake. It may offer hope even to those in whom life itself only barely flickers.”

The novelist Colm Tóibín described Krasznahorkai as “a unique literary visionary who has opened up a huge amount of rich space in the contemporary novel showing what can be done”.

“Krasznahorkai richly deserves the prize,” said the novelist Hari Kunzru. “He has a reputation as an austere figure of European high culture, and indeed some of his work is uncompromisingly bleak and difficult, but he’s also a curious, playful and very funny writer. When I read him, I feel fortified, both as a human being and as someone who’s trying to make art. He shows me what’s possible.”

Born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954, Krasznahorkai first made his mark with his 1985 debut novel Satantango, a mesmerising portrayal of a collapsing rural community. The novel would go on to win the Man Booker International prize in English three decades later, in 2015. It was also famously adapted into a seven-hour film by director Béla Tarr, with whom Krasznahorkai has had a long creative partnership.

Often described as postmodern, Krasznahorkai is known for his long, winding sentences (the 12 chapters of Satantango each consist of a single paragraph) and the kind of relentless intensity that has led critics to compare him to Gogol, Melville and Kafka.

“Krasznahorkai is a great epic writer in the central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterised by absurdism and grotesque excess,” said Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee.

He described Krasznahorkai’s prose as having “developed towards … flowing syntax with long, winding sentences devoid of full stops that has become his signature.”

Susan Sontag has described the author as “the contemporary Hungarian master of apocalypse”, while WG Sebald praised the universality of his vision. Only a few of Krasznahorkai’s works have been translated into English. The literary critic James Wood once wrote that his books “get passed around like rare currency”.

Krasznahorkai’s career has been shaped by travel as much as by language. He first left communist Hungary in 1987, spending a year in West Berlin for a fellowship, and later drew inspiration from east Asia – particularly Mongolia and China – for works such as The Prisoner of Urga, and Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens.

While working on War and War, he travelled widely across Europe and lived for a time in Allen Ginsberg’s New York apartment, describing the legendary Beat poet’s support as crucial to completing the novel.

Asked how he would describe his work in an interview with the Guardian in 2015, Krasznahorkai said: “Letters; then from letters, words; then from these words, some short sentences; then more sentences that are longer, and in the main very long sentences, for the duration of 35 years. Beauty in language. Fun in hell.”

On people discovering his work for the first time, he added: “If there are readers who haven’t read my books, I couldn’t recommend anything to read to them; instead, I’d advise them to go out, sit down somewhere, perhaps by the side of a brook, with nothing to do, nothing to think about, just remaining in silence like stones. They will eventually meet someone who has already read my books.”

Before the announcement, Ladbrokes had listed Can Xue, the avant garde Chinese writer, and Krasznahorkai as joint favourites for this year’s prize.

The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded on 117 previous occasions since 1901. Recent laureates include Annie Ernaux, Bob Dylan, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Louise Glück, Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk. Last year’s recipient was Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for The Vegetarian.

Krasznahorkai will formally receive the medal and diploma in a ceremony in Stockholm in December.

“Krasznahorkai reminds us life is difficult, agency almost always out of reach, and the colours of many times and places sombre,” said the poet and writer Fiona Sampson in response to his win. His work, she says, is “an essential read for these times, not least in a Europe once again feeling the squeeze between Russia and the US”.

• To explore all books by László Krasznahorkai, visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Can Xue, László Krasznahorkai, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie are among the authors most likely to win this year’s Nobel prize in literature, according to the bookies.

Chinese avant garde author Can Xue, 72, and postmodern Hungarian author Krasznahorkai, 71, are tied as Ladbrokes’ favourite to win, both with odds of 10/1. Can Xue was also the favourite to win last year’s prize, which was ultimately awarded to South Korean author Han Kang.

The recipient of the 2025 prize will be announced on Thursday 9 October at noon BST, and will receive 11m Swedish kronor (£870,000).

“The odds suggest the race for this year’s Nobel literature prize is wide-open as things stand,” Alex Apati of Ladbrokes said. “Can Xue was a considerable favourite this time last year by comparison, with László Krasznahorkai and Haruki Murakami making up the podium spots in the betting right now.”

Can Xue, whose real name is Deng Xiaohua, is known for her experimental style, and has published hundreds of novels, novellas and short stories. In 2019, she was longlisted for the International Booker prize for her novel Love in the New Millennium. Were she to be named laureate, she would become the third Chinese-born person to win a Nobel prize in literature, after novelist Mo Yan in 2012 and Gao Xingjian in 2000.

She is tied neck and neck with Krasznahorkai, whose dystopian, melancholic novels have won numerous prizes, including the 2019 National Book award for translated literature and the 2015 Man Booker International prize. Several of his works, including his novels Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been adapted into feature films.

Murakami, the 76-year-old Japanese novelist, short-story writer and translator, is third in the race, with 14/1 odds.

Last year, the prize went to Han, a novelist best known internationally for the novels The Vegetarian and Human Acts. Han was chosen by the Nobel committee for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.

Also with 16/1 odds are Cristina Rivera Garza, Enrique Vila-Matas, Gerald Murnane, Mircea Cărtărescu and Thomas Pynchon. Other authors listed by Ladbrokes include Lyudmila Ulitskaya (18/1), Ersi Sotiropoulos (20/1), Atwood (20/1), Michel Houellebecq (20/1), Péter Nádas (20/1), Pierre Michon (20/1) and Rushdie (20/1).

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Atwood – the internationally renowned Canadian author of The Handmaid’s Tale and Booker-winning novels The Testaments and The Blind Assassin, along with a host of other works – has for years been tipped to win the award.

The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded 117 times since 1901. Recent laureates include Annie Ernaux, Bob Dylan, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Louise Glück, Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk.