Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens [László Krasznahorkai]

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2025

The only nonfiction work by Krasznahorkai available in English, a bracing account of traveling through China at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Known for his brilliantly dark fictional visions, László Krasznahorkai is one of the most respected European writers of his generation. Here, he brings us on a journey through China at the dawn of the twenty-first century. On the precipice of its emergence as a global power, China is experiencing cataclysms of modernity as its harsh Maoist strictures meet the chaotic flux of globalization. What remains of the Middle Kingdom’s ancient cultural riches? And can a Westerner truly understand China’s past and present—or the murky waters where the two meet?

Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is both a travel memoir and the chronicle of a distinct intellectual shift as one of the most captivating contemporary writers and thinkers begins to engage with the cultures of Asia and the legacies of its interactions with Europe in a newly globalized society.