The Last Wolf & Herman
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WINNER OF THE 2025 NOBEL PRIZE
Now in paperback, two novellas from the Hungarian master László Krasznahorkai—“one of the most mysterious artists now at work” (Colm Toíbín)
The Last Wolf (translated by George Szirtes) is Krasznahorkai in a maddening nutshell—it features a classic obsessed narrator, a man hired (by mistake) to write the true tale of the last wolf in Spain. This miserable experience (being mistaken for another person, dragged about a cold foreign place, and appalled by a species’s end) is narrated—all in a single sentence—as a sad looping tale, a howl more or less, in a dreary Berlin bar to a patently bored bartender.
Herman (translated by John Batki), “a peerless virtuoso of trapping who guards the splendid mysteries of an ancient craft gradually sinking into permanent oblivion,” is asked to clear a forest’s last “noxious beasts.” He begins with great zeal, although in time he “suspects that maybe he was ‘on the wrong scent.’” Herman switches sides, deciding to track entirely new game …
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
John Batki
Translated by
John Batki is a kilimologist, writer, translator, and visual artist. He was born in Hungary and has lived in the United States since age fourteen.
George Szirtes
Translated by
George Szirtes's twelfth book of poem, Reel (2004) won the T S Eliot Prize for which he has been twice shortlisted since. His latest is Fresh Out of the Sky. (2021). His memoir The Photographer at Sixteen (2019) was awarded the James Tait Black Prize in 2020. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a co-winner of the International Booker translator's prize His own books have beentranslated into various languages including Italian, German, Chinese and Hungarian. He has written for children, radio, and various composers.
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