Longing – anguish – melancholy: the emotional spectrum of resistance

László Krasznahorkai received the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature for his staggering examination of our time’s major issues: social violence and disintegration, the awareness of dying and the deathly awareness of stagnation and decay. Joining him for a thought-provoking conversation will be Merve Emre, a professor at Wesleyan University and critic for The New Yorker with long experience interviewing and corresponding with writers such as Jon Fosse and Elena Ferrante. They will be focusing on the obsessions, motifs, language, techniques and secrets of the literary giant and master stylist, but also tackling broader questions about literature in our times. Is there still a need for messiahs and prophets nowadays? What is there for us to do as spectral far-right armies advance in Europe and the US? How close are we to a real Apocalypse? How can Krasznahorkai’s hypnotic prose cause an awakening and spark personal resistance and collective revolution? And the most urgent question of all: Is there still hope?