The Nobel Prize for Literature was on Thursday awarded to Laszlo Krasznahorkai considered by many as Hungary's most important living author, whose works explore themes of postmodern dystopia and melancholy.

The Swedish Academy honoured him "for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art".

Speaking to the Nobel Foundation, the 71-year-old author said he was "very happy" and "very proud".

"To be in the line, which contains so many really great writers and poets, gives me power to use my language, my original language, the Hungarian language," he said.

The Academy highlighted Krasznahorkai's first novel, 1985's "Satantango", which brought him to prominence in Hungary and remains his best-known work.

It called the novel, which portrays a destitute group of people isolated in the Hungarian countryside, "a literary sensation".

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........

© International Business Times