'One of the most mysterious artists now at work' Colm Tóibín
'The contemporary master of the apocalypse' Susan Sontag
Under a cold sun blazing in a blinding blue sky, a train pulls away from Urga and out into the Gobi desert, headed for Beijing. Aboard the train sits a traveller who, amid a Dantean spiritual crisis and dogged by questions of the most profound variety, has been compelled to run away to the heart of China. His journey, though finite, resists quantification. His destination proves even harder to define.
Available now in English for the first time since its original publication in 1992, The Prisoner of Urga is an extraordinary passage through a hellacious paradise of perilous poetry.
Autorentext
László Krasznahorkai was born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954. He has written 14 novels and won multiple awards including the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025, the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2019 for Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming, the 2015 Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement and the 2024 Prix Formentor. Several of his most famous novels, including Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, were turned into films by the director Béla Tarr. His books have been translated into forty-two languages. He lives in the hills of Pilisszentlászló in Hungary.
John Batki is a writer and translator from Hungary. His translation of The World Goes On, alongside Ottilie Mulzet and George Szirtes, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2018.