'Humans do not change throughout history; they are always the same.'

Krasznahorkai (Gyula, Hungary, 1954), winner of the 2024 Formentor Prize for Literature, was briefly present at that year's Guadalajara International Book Fair. Maintaining a low profile, he met with his readers in a keynote address and also with a group of journalists, whom he invited for a conversation.

In this "family" circle, as he defined it, he answered each question calmly and affably. The screenwriter and collaborator of filmmaker Béla Tarr spoke about his novel Baron Wenckheim Comes Home (Acantilado, 2024), which tells the story of a Hungarian baron who, after living in Argentina for decades, returns to his native country without a single coin, but with the goal of reuniting with his teenage love.

Upon learning that his love interest is no longer a young girl, he is disillusioned and plunges him to his death. "It's a funny and tragic story at the same time, because the people of Hungary were waiting for a rich man who would give them money, they waited for him as if he were Jesus, but he didn't have a penny," says Krasznahorkai, who has been a frequent Nobel Prize candidate, about this story.

The author of Satanic Tango also addressed topics such as political extremism, his complicated relationship with his native Hungary, the human condition, and why he considers his literary work a failure.

I don't work as a writer; in fact, I'm not a writer; I write books. I'm an artist who happens to write books, novels, short stories. I don't work at a desk, with a computer and all that, but in my head, like an old poet. I write 15 to 50 pages in my head, always revising and correcting. Then, I get to my desk and transcribe it onto my computer. Everything happens in my head, in my memory.

The writer is a social category and I have been outside of society my whole life.

The human condition. That's my only theme. It doesn't depend on a specific era; humans don't change throughout history; they're always the same. The people of ancient empires are exactly like us. The book Baron Wenckheim Returns Home isn't a Hungarian story; it's absolutely universal.

Without Kafka, I would never have written. I was 12 years old when I read Franz Kafka's The Castle; I read it from beginning to end and didn't understand a thing. The reason was because I have a brother six years older than me, and I listened to his conversations with his friends about Kafka, and I wanted to belong to this small, important circle. So I went to his library, took The Castle, and read it all at night. It was like a fog: Who is this character? What is this castle? The Castle and all of Kafka's literature remained forever, even today, a secret to me. I can't say that I understand Kafka, but without this secret meaning, I don't think I would have begun to write. I can say that without Hebrew and the Hebrew religion you can't understand Kafka, but I think that even with all this knowledge, you also have no chance of understanding what Kafka is. There is a surface; of course, you can understand his novels, but this secret meaning of what you read is the source of literature's power.

Without irony, I could neither live nor write. Without it, I wouldn't be able to endure this life.

They come and go. This has been seen throughout human history. What's new is the general stupidity in the world. I'm not a romantic, I'm not an old man who believes that times were better before, not at all. I don't believe in progress or in the possibility of changing the human condition. I believe we can only live through words.

It could be. The radical right in the 20th century was fascism; the radical left produced the terrible and inhuman Stalinism, which was absolutely not communism. It was pure dictatorship, and that wasn't a communitarian society; it was an unbearable social system against the human kind. I don't think radical political movements help, because to be radical, after a while, you need to do things with aggression. Totalitarianism is harder to live than to pronounce in English. I lived almost half my life under Soviet Russia, and it was absolutely inhumane and a lie, because communists tell poor people, "This is your moment, we're here for you." That is the biggest and most cynical lie. Under communism, poor people remain poor; that's their destiny. But there's a difference between the people of the Sierra Nevada and the poor people in a factory, because those in the Sierra Nevada have their culture—they have their festivals, clothing, beliefs, memories, and ancestors; but in a big city, the poor have nothing, not even a culture.

It's always a terrible story. If a dictator, an aggressive politician, or an aggressive police officer attacks freedom of expression, it's absolutely unbearable for me. Freedom is the only source, the only natural condition for journalists. I am against any attack or aggression against free journalism, free art.

If a car crash were to happen here, in front of the hotel, if you wanted to describe what happened, you couldn't. We can't capture reality, because everything depends on millions of things. If I could describe what happened, it would only be an opinion, a short story, my version of what would have happened. That's why we are absolutely helpless before history. We can only recount the past, not create it; we can only tell history, not make history. You may believe this is history, but it's just an incredible tale. We can't capture the essence; we can only make a story.

People feel that catastrophe, the apocalypse, will come in the future, but in my opinion, it's hedonistic to believe that because we live in a society that's in a state of permanent catastrophe. People think we should feel it when the apocalypse comes, but that doesn't make sense because we're already living through the apocalypse; it's a permanent condition, not something we have to wait for. The apocalypse isn't a catastrophe; it's a judgment, and judgment is a process.

I don't do it for pleasure, not because it's a great country or because I love it so much. It's hard to say anything bad about my country, but let's just say that Hungary isn't a country, it's a psychiatric clinic. The doctors abandoned this clinic, and the mentally ill people put on a play: "On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I'll be the doctor and you'll be the patient." Hungary isn't a country, it's a psychiatric clinic, and of course, who's crazy enough to want to return to the clinic? I returned because this is my homeland, and the Hungarian language is my homeland; without Hungarian, I wouldn't return. The mother tongue isn't just a language; it's a very strange complex. If I use another language, it's just another language; but if I use my mother tongue, I'm also using my memories, my upbringing, my past, my ancestors, my history. The mother tongue is more important than a country itself.

All my books are flops, because I'm not at all satisfied with them. On my best days, when I found readers who wanted to be readers, I always said, "Please don't read my books." And it wasn't just a joke; I'm really not satisfied with my books. I wanted them to read only Satanic Tango; that should be the only one. I'm not a writer, I'm an artist, a free spirit. I wanted to write just one book, and unfortunately, a friend (the film director Béla Tarr) came to me and said, "I want to make a book out of this film." I immediately said no because I'm not a fan of filmmakers; they only listen to David Bowie; they're very elegant, and I'm not elegant, and I don't really like Bowie's music; the newer songs, yes, because they're more complex. I agreed if he'd let me be part of it, but I asked him not to make it an adaptation.

One word: perfection.

If I knew, I would have written it already.

Dante's Divine Comedy; Homer's The Odyssey; and Shakespeare's.

El Universal Mexico - GDA