Krasznahorkai, László

The Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai was born in a Jewish middle-class family in Gyula, southeast Hungary, which he describes as "a rather strange, sad place, full of lonely, peculiar people". His father was a lawyer and his mother a social security administrator. Krasznahorkai deserted from military service after having been punished for insubordination, and he drifted around for a few years, doing social work among the Roma and playing the piano in a jazz trio that performed in the Hungarian countryside. He has lived from his writing since he left university with a degree in law and Hungarian in 1983.