Seiobo There Below
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WINNER OF THE 2025 NOBEL PRIZE
From the winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize, the latest novel from “the contemporary Hungarian master of the apocalypse” (Susan Sontag)
Seiobo — a Japanese goddess — has a peach tree in her garden that blossoms once every three thousand years: its fruit brings immortality. In Seiobo There Below, we see her returning again and again to mortal realms, searching for a glimpse of perfection. Beauty, in Krasznahorkai’s new novel, reflects, however fleetingly, the sacred — even if we are mostly unable to bear it. Seiobo shows us an ancient Buddha being restored; Perugino managing his workshop; a Japanese Noh actor rehearsing; a fanatic of Baroque music lecturing a handful of old villagers; tourists intruding into the rituals of Japan’s most sacred shrine; a heron hunting.… Over these scenes and more — structured by the Fibonacci sequence — Seiobo hovers, watching it all.László Krasznahorkai
WINNER OF THE 2025 NOBEL PRIZE
László Krasznahorkai was born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954. He worked for some years as an editor until 1984, when he became a freelance writer. He now lives in reclusiveness in the hills of Szentlászló. His many accolades include the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature, and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement. Starting in 2000, New Directions has published fourteen of his books.
More by László Krasznahorkai
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