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Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens: Reportage
Known for his brilliantly dark fictional visions, László Krasznahorkai is one of the most respected European writers of his generation and the winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. Here, he brings us on a journey through China at the dawn of the new millennium. 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 globalism. 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. Rendered in English by award-winning translator Ottilie Mulzet, Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is an important work, marking the emergence of Krasznahorkai as a truly global novelist.
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. Rendered in English by award-winning translator Ottilie Mulzet, Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is an important work, marking the emergence of Krasznahorkai as a truly global novelist.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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About the author
László Krasznahorkai
45 books3,080 followersLászló Krasznahorkai is a Hungarian novelist and screenwriter who is known for critically difficult and demanding novels, often labelled as postmodern, with dystopian and bleak melancholic themes. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2025.
He is probably best known through the oeuvre of the director Béla Tarr, who has collaborated with him on several movies.
Apart from the Nobel Prize, Krasznahorkai has also been honored with numerous literary prizes, among them the highest award of the Hungarian state, the Kossuth Prize, and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize for his English-translated oeuvre.
He is probably best known through the oeuvre of the director Béla Tarr, who has collaborated with him on several movies.
Apart from the Nobel Prize, Krasznahorkai has also been honored with numerous literary prizes, among them the highest award of the Hungarian state, the Kossuth Prize, and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize for his English-translated oeuvre.
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October 9, 2025
From the winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature
"He sees the new life of New China - the locus of a monstrously vehement desire for money and things that can be gained with money, he sees the masses of tourists inundating the so-called cultural monuments, but he also sees that these people have no connection with their own classical culture, for their cultural monuments no longer exist - in the name of restoration, their essence has been annihilated, annihilated by the most common of tastes and the cheapest of investments as well as by the terrorizing principle of the greatest gain."
A disappointment. This was actually published in the original in 2004 between War & War (1999) and Seiobo There Below (2008).
Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens has neither the "lava-flow of narrative, a vast black river of type" (per George Szirtes) of War & War and Satantango, nor the sublime prose of Seiobo. Instead, the dominant note is curmudgeon - Thomas Bernhard but without the savage humour or the irony.
The translator, the excellent Ottilie Mulzet (also Seiobo and Animalinside) can not be faulted - she can only work with the text presented to her.
Billed as "Reportage" this is essentially a non-fictional account of Krasznahorkai's "planned quest for the detritus of Chinese classical culture", although he writes as a third person narrator of the quest of one "Laszlo Stein", a writer but of poems.
In the original, and indeed in the early review copies in English, the seeker was called László Dante (apparently changed to Stein in the final English at the author's request), which obviously hints at links to the Inferno - as pointed out in the excellent review at (http://www.vqronline.org/nonfiction-c...). In that reading, this novel, which came between the more apocalyptic European works ("Hell") and the more rapturous Seiobo ("Heaven") is Purgatory, although I am more reminded of Revelation 3.16 "So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth."
An air of profound disappointment and bewilderment is Stein's dominant view. We follow him, and his Hungarian but Chinese-speaking translator, on a trip around China in search of authentic ancient Chinese culture, visiting various sites but also conversing with Chinese intellectuals and cultural figures with him lamenting the failure of his decade long quest.
"10 years, as he has travelled through the provinces of China and viewed temples and monuments, [what he has seen] is nothing other than the destruction of those exquisite objects in the hands of those who are not worthy."
The "not worthy" comment highlights one major issue. Stein displays the worst kind of cultural snobbery - when he and his translator find a living village historically preserved ("as if they had wandered into a marvellous dream taking place at exactly that time, the time of the Ming or the Qing, because nothing has changed"), all is wonderful, until other tourists dare to turn up to see the same thing "arriving relentlessly like an attacking army."
The bigger problem is that Stein/Krasznahorkai seems to wish that China, and its 1 billion people, had opted out of any economic progress in the 20th and 21st Centuries and to have been preserved as a museum for his benefit. He only finds pleasure where he sees that "New China" (used as a pejorative term e.g. "New China, the China that he, Stein, is trying to escape") has yet to reach:
"This is not a place where anything can change, he says, thank God, everything here is so far away from the world, it has remained intact and unspoiled."
So, for example, when a poet points out to him the hypocrisy that "westerners love traditional Chinese culture, but that was completely dictatorial! They say dictatorships are bad" Stein replies that he is fine with China bypassing democracy if that's what it takes.
There is a worrying sexist edge as well. Almost all his female interlocutors are largely remarked on for their appearance ("the amazing, particularly beautiful fashion designer", the "beautiful" museum director). Indeed in the last case, Stein doesn't even recount or recall her words, only that while talking she sucked on a lock of her "wondrously glittering, ebony black hair."
The one counterweight to my view is that I may have misinterpreted Krasznahorkai's intention.
The use of the "Laszlo Stein" device could signal a distancing of view between the author and the character, in which case some of my Krasznahorkai may be inviting us to criticise Stein's views rather than the novel. But I don't believe that was the intention.
Also Stein's interlocutors often strongly refute Stein's views.
One points out "things were always just as difficult or truly original thinkers and artists, as they are today - they lived solitary and oppressed in their own times". Another, a professor of literary history, responds to his views "that is certainly not the case...classical culture is in a much better position than it has ever been..because a very important aspect of classical culture is that it is very adaptable...the true goal of modernisation is for tradition to live within it but to live in a renewed form."
But Stein's views remain unchanged. Indeed the most common rhetorical device in the novel has "Stein stubbornly persist with his original question" even as the person he is talking to outright disagrees or more commonly deflects or politely ignores his views. These dialogues of the death, largely transcribed, it is hinted, from type recordings don't make for particularly enlightening or literary reading.
There are, nevertheless, nuggets of interest that one can dredge from the responses. One common theme is that Chinese culture is different - it isn't preserved in buildings or objects. Several highlight the distinctive nature of Chinese writing "a character in the Chinese language is not, in its essence, merely a word, the written form of a concept, but a vision, an apparition." Although at the same time, much knowledge and culture isn't codified but rather handed down from Master to apprentice, a theme that will reappear in Seiobo.
Ultimately, of interest to Krasznahorkai's completists, of which, to be fair, I am one, to understand the journey that took him from apocalyptic novels about Eastern Europe to those about the heights of East Asian culture. But rather dull and even disagreeable in its own right.
Originally (Hungarian and also in English ARC), the narrator was Dante Stein. Odd decision was made to change it to László Stein in the final English version, presumably to signpost to the reader that the narration is essentially autobiographical, but doing so misses the explicit nod to Dante in the progression of these three novels.
"He sees the new life of New China - the locus of a monstrously vehement desire for money and things that can be gained with money, he sees the masses of tourists inundating the so-called cultural monuments, but he also sees that these people have no connection with their own classical culture, for their cultural monuments no longer exist - in the name of restoration, their essence has been annihilated, annihilated by the most common of tastes and the cheapest of investments as well as by the terrorizing principle of the greatest gain."
A disappointment. This was actually published in the original in 2004 between War & War (1999) and Seiobo There Below (2008).
Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens has neither the "lava-flow of narrative, a vast black river of type" (per George Szirtes) of War & War and Satantango, nor the sublime prose of Seiobo. Instead, the dominant note is curmudgeon - Thomas Bernhard but without the savage humour or the irony.
The translator, the excellent Ottilie Mulzet (also Seiobo and Animalinside) can not be faulted - she can only work with the text presented to her.
Billed as "Reportage" this is essentially a non-fictional account of Krasznahorkai's "planned quest for the detritus of Chinese classical culture", although he writes as a third person narrator of the quest of one "Laszlo Stein", a writer but of poems.
In the original, and indeed in the early review copies in English, the seeker was called László Dante (apparently changed to Stein in the final English at the author's request), which obviously hints at links to the Inferno - as pointed out in the excellent review at (http://www.vqronline.org/nonfiction-c...). In that reading, this novel, which came between the more apocalyptic European works ("Hell") and the more rapturous Seiobo ("Heaven") is Purgatory, although I am more reminded of Revelation 3.16 "So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth."
An air of profound disappointment and bewilderment is Stein's dominant view. We follow him, and his Hungarian but Chinese-speaking translator, on a trip around China in search of authentic ancient Chinese culture, visiting various sites but also conversing with Chinese intellectuals and cultural figures with him lamenting the failure of his decade long quest.
"10 years, as he has travelled through the provinces of China and viewed temples and monuments, [what he has seen] is nothing other than the destruction of those exquisite objects in the hands of those who are not worthy."
The "not worthy" comment highlights one major issue. Stein displays the worst kind of cultural snobbery - when he and his translator find a living village historically preserved ("as if they had wandered into a marvellous dream taking place at exactly that time, the time of the Ming or the Qing, because nothing has changed"), all is wonderful, until other tourists dare to turn up to see the same thing "arriving relentlessly like an attacking army."
The bigger problem is that Stein/Krasznahorkai seems to wish that China, and its 1 billion people, had opted out of any economic progress in the 20th and 21st Centuries and to have been preserved as a museum for his benefit. He only finds pleasure where he sees that "New China" (used as a pejorative term e.g. "New China, the China that he, Stein, is trying to escape") has yet to reach:
"This is not a place where anything can change, he says, thank God, everything here is so far away from the world, it has remained intact and unspoiled."
So, for example, when a poet points out to him the hypocrisy that "westerners love traditional Chinese culture, but that was completely dictatorial! They say dictatorships are bad" Stein replies that he is fine with China bypassing democracy if that's what it takes.
There is a worrying sexist edge as well. Almost all his female interlocutors are largely remarked on for their appearance ("the amazing, particularly beautiful fashion designer", the "beautiful" museum director). Indeed in the last case, Stein doesn't even recount or recall her words, only that while talking she sucked on a lock of her "wondrously glittering, ebony black hair."
The one counterweight to my view is that I may have misinterpreted Krasznahorkai's intention.
The use of the "Laszlo Stein" device could signal a distancing of view between the author and the character, in which case some of my Krasznahorkai may be inviting us to criticise Stein's views rather than the novel. But I don't believe that was the intention.
Also Stein's interlocutors often strongly refute Stein's views.
One points out "things were always just as difficult or truly original thinkers and artists, as they are today - they lived solitary and oppressed in their own times". Another, a professor of literary history, responds to his views "that is certainly not the case...classical culture is in a much better position than it has ever been..because a very important aspect of classical culture is that it is very adaptable...the true goal of modernisation is for tradition to live within it but to live in a renewed form."
But Stein's views remain unchanged. Indeed the most common rhetorical device in the novel has "Stein stubbornly persist with his original question" even as the person he is talking to outright disagrees or more commonly deflects or politely ignores his views. These dialogues of the death, largely transcribed, it is hinted, from type recordings don't make for particularly enlightening or literary reading.
There are, nevertheless, nuggets of interest that one can dredge from the responses. One common theme is that Chinese culture is different - it isn't preserved in buildings or objects. Several highlight the distinctive nature of Chinese writing "a character in the Chinese language is not, in its essence, merely a word, the written form of a concept, but a vision, an apparition." Although at the same time, much knowledge and culture isn't codified but rather handed down from Master to apprentice, a theme that will reappear in Seiobo.
Ultimately, of interest to Krasznahorkai's completists, of which, to be fair, I am one, to understand the journey that took him from apocalyptic novels about Eastern Europe to those about the heights of East Asian culture. But rather dull and even disagreeable in its own right.
Originally (Hungarian and also in English ARC), the narrator was Dante Stein. Odd decision was made to change it to László Stein in the final English version, presumably to signpost to the reader that the narration is essentially autobiographical, but doing so misses the explicit nod to Dante in the progression of these three novels.
July 2, 2017
It seems somehow fitting that I should have used an expired coupon for frozen lasagna as a bookmark while reading this book…
Can a travel memoir end up being a kind of late-onset Bildungsroman? Like rediscovering one's inner, spiritual child and having it rush through spiritual development during a trip through China...
Krasznahorkai likes to blur the lines between things (like paragraphs) and here we're given a nonfiction volume with the word "reportage" in the translated title but a narrative that proceeds in the third person with a main "character" named László Stein. To say this Stein is annoying would be an understatement. He's a European tourist come to China hoping it fulfills his vision of its ancient culture. China serves as a kind of last gasp hope for an ancient culture to survive in the 21st century. Hoping to escape the crass materialism that has infected most of the world, he ends up stumbling through a dirty, crowded, souvenir-infested land in the midst of transformation. Nuns try to steal his money, the weather ruins his views, people seemingly refuse to answer his questions.
Stein himself seems somewhat unclear as to what exactly he's looking for at first. He comes off as just a grumpy traveler full of complaints. The bus is too crowded. The monks aren't authentic enough. It's too hot. It's too wet. Etc. Etc. One of his first monastery visits results in an empty Lotus throne (an image I just now realized is repeated toward the end of the book in a more ersatz-yet-grandiose fashion)--he is disappointed that "the Buddha is nowhere" and yet he ends up being thrilled to see the newly carved Buddha, which rivals the others he's seen.
And so he starts off on this search looking for a range of such external signs and proof that traditional Chinese culture still exists and matters, that it is both valued and carried forward by the country's institutions and youth. It's like he's caught somewhere between desiring permanence and authenticity through a kind of frozen, romanticized classical notion of China and wanting to see contemporary culture created anew using classical techniques and approaches without either one changing the other in the process. Along the way he has numerous disappointing discussions and encounters and yet they change him and show him bits and pieces that transform his understanding. China becomes a living, breathing example of history attempting not to be swallowed by capitalism. A forum in which to discuss the role of intellectuals and artists in today's world. Tradition competes with technology. And China stands as a unique example due to the length and depth of its history (it's isolation for so long).
Ultimately, I think Stein's stubbornness ends up being somewhat endearing, and certainly comical. Almost every native Chinese character he converses with disagrees with his premises and summaries of China's cultural problems. He’s told “There is no chance for you at all to understand anything about Chinese culture.” And yet, when Stein meets someone who does value and cherish traditional Chinese arts or culture, he is frequently baffled as to why they persist in doing so when it is not at all lucrative or even practical. He wants culture preserved to the point of wanting it protected from people, leading one to wonder for whom it is being preserved. These smaller conversations piece together a larger one about just what is the role of culture in today’s ever-more-connected world. Have we lost something irrevocably? Are we holding on to something that was never truly there (or, that has been idealized in hindsight)? Should art instill a sort of ethics or moral ideal?
Stein yearns for a kind of “correct approach”, a sort of core underlying set of principles. We learn that even the Buddhists in China were split with the northern Buddhists adhering to continued, persistent “practiced immersion”, while the southern Buddhists believed in “sudden experience of the essential: they thought that nirvana could only be reached in an unexpected, irrational moment, one that cannot be prepared for.” Stein desires the former, but experiences the latter.
Through all this, Krasznahorkai practices his own kind of “Confusionism,” leading us through mountains, centers of commerce, invisible libraries, and faith-affirming gardens until we emerge with Stein, perhaps no less enlightened but somehow hopeful, embracing contradictions.
-----------------------------------------------------------
WORDS I LEARNED WHILE READING THIS BOOK (SKIPPING MOST OF THE CHINESE ONES BECAUSE THERE WERE TOO MANY, I'M NOT LIKELY TO REMEMBER THEM, AND I FORGOT TO MARK THEM DOWN):
plangent | vitrines | kunqu | dissimulate
Can a travel memoir end up being a kind of late-onset Bildungsroman? Like rediscovering one's inner, spiritual child and having it rush through spiritual development during a trip through China...
Krasznahorkai likes to blur the lines between things (like paragraphs) and here we're given a nonfiction volume with the word "reportage" in the translated title but a narrative that proceeds in the third person with a main "character" named László Stein. To say this Stein is annoying would be an understatement. He's a European tourist come to China hoping it fulfills his vision of its ancient culture. China serves as a kind of last gasp hope for an ancient culture to survive in the 21st century. Hoping to escape the crass materialism that has infected most of the world, he ends up stumbling through a dirty, crowded, souvenir-infested land in the midst of transformation. Nuns try to steal his money, the weather ruins his views, people seemingly refuse to answer his questions.
Stein himself seems somewhat unclear as to what exactly he's looking for at first. He comes off as just a grumpy traveler full of complaints. The bus is too crowded. The monks aren't authentic enough. It's too hot. It's too wet. Etc. Etc. One of his first monastery visits results in an empty Lotus throne (an image I just now realized is repeated toward the end of the book in a more ersatz-yet-grandiose fashion)--he is disappointed that "the Buddha is nowhere" and yet he ends up being thrilled to see the newly carved Buddha, which rivals the others he's seen.
"... and there sits a huge , brand-new Buddha, a Buddha to which every other Buddha they have seen until now seems merely new-made, exasperatingly soulless, primitive, shoddy--it is beautiful, sublime, exactly the kind of Buddha in which a believer can truly find the Buddha.". But can a believer find the Buddha through external objects and symbols?
And so he starts off on this search looking for a range of such external signs and proof that traditional Chinese culture still exists and matters, that it is both valued and carried forward by the country's institutions and youth. It's like he's caught somewhere between desiring permanence and authenticity through a kind of frozen, romanticized classical notion of China and wanting to see contemporary culture created anew using classical techniques and approaches without either one changing the other in the process. Along the way he has numerous disappointing discussions and encounters and yet they change him and show him bits and pieces that transform his understanding. China becomes a living, breathing example of history attempting not to be swallowed by capitalism. A forum in which to discuss the role of intellectuals and artists in today's world. Tradition competes with technology. And China stands as a unique example due to the length and depth of its history (it's isolation for so long).
Ultimately, I think Stein's stubbornness ends up being somewhat endearing, and certainly comical. Almost every native Chinese character he converses with disagrees with his premises and summaries of China's cultural problems. He’s told “There is no chance for you at all to understand anything about Chinese culture.” And yet, when Stein meets someone who does value and cherish traditional Chinese arts or culture, he is frequently baffled as to why they persist in doing so when it is not at all lucrative or even practical. He wants culture preserved to the point of wanting it protected from people, leading one to wonder for whom it is being preserved. These smaller conversations piece together a larger one about just what is the role of culture in today’s ever-more-connected world. Have we lost something irrevocably? Are we holding on to something that was never truly there (or, that has been idealized in hindsight)? Should art instill a sort of ethics or moral ideal?
Stein yearns for a kind of “correct approach”, a sort of core underlying set of principles. We learn that even the Buddhists in China were split with the northern Buddhists adhering to continued, persistent “practiced immersion”, while the southern Buddhists believed in “sudden experience of the essential: they thought that nirvana could only be reached in an unexpected, irrational moment, one that cannot be prepared for.” Stein desires the former, but experiences the latter.
Through all this, Krasznahorkai practices his own kind of “Confusionism,” leading us through mountains, centers of commerce, invisible libraries, and faith-affirming gardens until we emerge with Stein, perhaps no less enlightened but somehow hopeful, embracing contradictions.
-----------------------------------------------------------
WORDS I LEARNED WHILE READING THIS BOOK (SKIPPING MOST OF THE CHINESE ONES BECAUSE THERE WERE TOO MANY, I'M NOT LIKELY TO REMEMBER THEM, AND I FORGOT TO MARK THEM DOWN):
plangent | vitrines | kunqu | dissimulate
November 10, 2025
Ik ben idolaat van het ondoorgrondelijke proza van Laszlo Krasznahorkai (Nobelprijswinnaar 2025). Dus lees ik alles van hem wat ik lezen kan. Liefst in Nederlandse vertaling, maar als dat niet kan in het Engels. Dus kon ik ook "Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heaven"s niet laten liggen. Dit boek is zeker niet zo intens en meeslepend als "Satanstango", "Melancholie van het verzet", "Oorlog en oorlog" of "Seiobo there below". Maar het is wel weer een intrigerend boek, zeker voor Krasznahorkai- fans. Want een reus is een reus is een reus is een reus.
Het boek wordt als "reportage" aangeduid. Veel recensenten vatten het dan ook op als weergave van Krasznahorkais persoonlijke impressies van zijn Chinese reizen in de jaren ‘90. Die reizen ondernam hij omdat hij volkomen gedesillusioneerd was over Hongarije en de Westerse wereld. En omdat hij inspiratie en nieuwe vormen van schoonheid zocht in de tradities van het Verre Oosten. Die inspiratie vond hij, zoals blijkt uit "Destruction and Sorrow" en uit eerdere – nog niet in het Nederlands of Engels vertaalde- reportages. En dat klonk daarna ook door in zijn fictie. Met name in "Seiobo there below" en "A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East". Want dat zijn boeken waarin de sublieme Oosterse schoonheid fel schittert, als tegenwicht voor Krasznahorkais diepe en walgende treurnis over de wereld.
Maar een puur autobiografisch reisboek is "Destruction and Sorrow" niet. Het is namelijk geen verslag met Krasznahorkai als hoofdpersoon en ik- figuur. We volgen ene Laszlo Stein, een fictieve Hongaarse dichter, die samen met "the interpreter" het moderne China doorkruist. Wanhopig zoekend naar de verloren bronnen van wijsheid en schoonheid van de klassieke Chinese cultuur. Voorts merken we dat Stein, vanwege zijn enorme desillusie over het moderne Westen en het moderne Hongarije, wanhopig snakt naar nieuwe en minder onzuivere manieren om de wereld te bezien. Vandaar zijn fascinatie voor de Chinese klassieke cultuur en het Boeddhisme. Over wat Stein precies voelt en drijft worden we echter zeer spaarzaam geïnformeerd. Hij is duidelijk een gepassioneerde zoeker naar wellicht onbestaanbare schoonheid. Maar hij blijft een mysterie voor ons. Zoals ook de schoonheid die Stein zoekt een mysterie blijft. Deze "reportage" is kortom net zo mysterieus en duister als Krasznahorkais romans en verhalen.
De desolate treurnis van Steins zoektocht wordt op fraaie wijze geëvoceerd. Bijvoorbeeld in ellenlange zinnen vol walging en machteloze woede over de eindeloze stromen toeristen, en over de loze banaliteit van het moderne China, dat met zijn geestloze staatskapitalisme al zijn eigen oerbronnen van schoonheid en wijsheid in totale kitsch versmoort. Of ook in de beschrijving van een in desolate mist gehuld Chinees dorp, vol troosteloze labyrintische paden, waar Stein en "the interpreter" voortdurend verdwalen. Vaak is Stein volkomen vertwijfeld omdat hij denkt dat de door hem gezochte schoonheid voorgoed verloren is. Die vertwijfeling en zwartgallige wanhoop worden door Krasznahorkai heel poignant opgeschreven. In zijn desolate, gedesillusioneerde en van de wereld walgende passages is Krasznahorkai dus vaak weer in bloedvorm.
Maar hij is minstens zo goed op dreef in passages waarin Stein toch glimpen van schoonheid opvangt. Dat zijn glimpen van ‘iets’ wat niet kan worden beschreven of gedefinieerd, en alleen bij benadering kan worden ervaren of gevoeld. Ongrijpbaar als een sfeer of een windvlaag. Of als een immense Chinese tuin met kwetterende vogels, die niet te beschrijven zo overweldigend is. Al begrijp je totaal niet waarom. En dat niet- begrijpen maakt de ervaring juist extra verpletterend. Bovendien moet een schoonheidservaring ook wel ongrijpbaar zijn, want schoonheid die zich in onze banale begrippenkaders laat inpassen is voor Krasznahorkai geen schoonheid meer.
Dat soort onbevattelijke schoonheidsmomenten nu weet Krasznahorkai naar mijn smaak heel suggestief op te roepen. Zodat je ook als lezer die overweldiging voelt, zonder dat je kan uitleggen of duiden wat dat overweldigende precies is. Zo had ik, toen een ondoorgrondelijke Chinees tegen Stein zei "I hope what you do will be like a mountain brook", even het gevoel dat ik begreep wat die Chinees zei. En waarom Stein door deze woorden in ademloze vervoering raakt. Tegelijk kan ik niet parafraseren wat hier wordt gezegd. Net zo min als Stein dat kon. Maar juist daardoor geeft deze zo suggestieve zin mij een bevrijdend schoonheidsgevoel. Een gevoel dat ik in aanraking kom met ‘iets’ dat juist zo onbegrijpelijk mooi is omdat het zich niet in mijn banale en ontoereikende brein laat inpassen. En diezelfde sensatie had ik ook bij diverse andere ongrijpbare sfeerbeelden en impressies die Krasznahorkai ons voortovert. Bijvoorbeeld in de volgende vreemde dialoog tussen en man en een vrouw, over de ongrijpbare wind en de al even ongrijpbare liefde voor die wind:
“ ‘So then tell me: Why do you like the wind so much?’
It is clear that the woman is afraid that the man will strike her.
‘The wind?’ She repeats the question. She is really afraid. She tries to muster up some
reply. ‘No one sees the wind’.
‘Fine, but why do you like it?’
‘Well… because it blows’.”
Dit boek is een meanderende zoektocht vol weeklachten en vergeefsheid. Waarin dan toch, op onverwachte momenten, ineens onbegrijpelijk intense schoonheid oplicht. Als weermiddel tegen de wanhopig makende voosheid van de moderne wereld. Alle desolate treurnis over de voosheid maakt het verlangen naar schoonheid bovendien des te groter, urgenter en invoelbaarder. Want die treurnis zou zonder glimpen van schoonheid helemáál ondraaglijk worden. Bovendien, juist hun ongrijpbaarheid maakt die glimpen zo onbegrijpelijk schoon. En dat is misschien de belangrijkste reden waarom ik er zelf zo van genoot, hoe ongrijpbaar hun schoonheid ook is.
Het boek wordt als "reportage" aangeduid. Veel recensenten vatten het dan ook op als weergave van Krasznahorkais persoonlijke impressies van zijn Chinese reizen in de jaren ‘90. Die reizen ondernam hij omdat hij volkomen gedesillusioneerd was over Hongarije en de Westerse wereld. En omdat hij inspiratie en nieuwe vormen van schoonheid zocht in de tradities van het Verre Oosten. Die inspiratie vond hij, zoals blijkt uit "Destruction and Sorrow" en uit eerdere – nog niet in het Nederlands of Engels vertaalde- reportages. En dat klonk daarna ook door in zijn fictie. Met name in "Seiobo there below" en "A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East". Want dat zijn boeken waarin de sublieme Oosterse schoonheid fel schittert, als tegenwicht voor Krasznahorkais diepe en walgende treurnis over de wereld.
Maar een puur autobiografisch reisboek is "Destruction and Sorrow" niet. Het is namelijk geen verslag met Krasznahorkai als hoofdpersoon en ik- figuur. We volgen ene Laszlo Stein, een fictieve Hongaarse dichter, die samen met "the interpreter" het moderne China doorkruist. Wanhopig zoekend naar de verloren bronnen van wijsheid en schoonheid van de klassieke Chinese cultuur. Voorts merken we dat Stein, vanwege zijn enorme desillusie over het moderne Westen en het moderne Hongarije, wanhopig snakt naar nieuwe en minder onzuivere manieren om de wereld te bezien. Vandaar zijn fascinatie voor de Chinese klassieke cultuur en het Boeddhisme. Over wat Stein precies voelt en drijft worden we echter zeer spaarzaam geïnformeerd. Hij is duidelijk een gepassioneerde zoeker naar wellicht onbestaanbare schoonheid. Maar hij blijft een mysterie voor ons. Zoals ook de schoonheid die Stein zoekt een mysterie blijft. Deze "reportage" is kortom net zo mysterieus en duister als Krasznahorkais romans en verhalen.
De desolate treurnis van Steins zoektocht wordt op fraaie wijze geëvoceerd. Bijvoorbeeld in ellenlange zinnen vol walging en machteloze woede over de eindeloze stromen toeristen, en over de loze banaliteit van het moderne China, dat met zijn geestloze staatskapitalisme al zijn eigen oerbronnen van schoonheid en wijsheid in totale kitsch versmoort. Of ook in de beschrijving van een in desolate mist gehuld Chinees dorp, vol troosteloze labyrintische paden, waar Stein en "the interpreter" voortdurend verdwalen. Vaak is Stein volkomen vertwijfeld omdat hij denkt dat de door hem gezochte schoonheid voorgoed verloren is. Die vertwijfeling en zwartgallige wanhoop worden door Krasznahorkai heel poignant opgeschreven. In zijn desolate, gedesillusioneerde en van de wereld walgende passages is Krasznahorkai dus vaak weer in bloedvorm.
Maar hij is minstens zo goed op dreef in passages waarin Stein toch glimpen van schoonheid opvangt. Dat zijn glimpen van ‘iets’ wat niet kan worden beschreven of gedefinieerd, en alleen bij benadering kan worden ervaren of gevoeld. Ongrijpbaar als een sfeer of een windvlaag. Of als een immense Chinese tuin met kwetterende vogels, die niet te beschrijven zo overweldigend is. Al begrijp je totaal niet waarom. En dat niet- begrijpen maakt de ervaring juist extra verpletterend. Bovendien moet een schoonheidservaring ook wel ongrijpbaar zijn, want schoonheid die zich in onze banale begrippenkaders laat inpassen is voor Krasznahorkai geen schoonheid meer.
Dat soort onbevattelijke schoonheidsmomenten nu weet Krasznahorkai naar mijn smaak heel suggestief op te roepen. Zodat je ook als lezer die overweldiging voelt, zonder dat je kan uitleggen of duiden wat dat overweldigende precies is. Zo had ik, toen een ondoorgrondelijke Chinees tegen Stein zei "I hope what you do will be like a mountain brook", even het gevoel dat ik begreep wat die Chinees zei. En waarom Stein door deze woorden in ademloze vervoering raakt. Tegelijk kan ik niet parafraseren wat hier wordt gezegd. Net zo min als Stein dat kon. Maar juist daardoor geeft deze zo suggestieve zin mij een bevrijdend schoonheidsgevoel. Een gevoel dat ik in aanraking kom met ‘iets’ dat juist zo onbegrijpelijk mooi is omdat het zich niet in mijn banale en ontoereikende brein laat inpassen. En diezelfde sensatie had ik ook bij diverse andere ongrijpbare sfeerbeelden en impressies die Krasznahorkai ons voortovert. Bijvoorbeeld in de volgende vreemde dialoog tussen en man en een vrouw, over de ongrijpbare wind en de al even ongrijpbare liefde voor die wind:
“ ‘So then tell me: Why do you like the wind so much?’
It is clear that the woman is afraid that the man will strike her.
‘The wind?’ She repeats the question. She is really afraid. She tries to muster up some
reply. ‘No one sees the wind’.
‘Fine, but why do you like it?’
‘Well… because it blows’.”
Dit boek is een meanderende zoektocht vol weeklachten en vergeefsheid. Waarin dan toch, op onverwachte momenten, ineens onbegrijpelijk intense schoonheid oplicht. Als weermiddel tegen de wanhopig makende voosheid van de moderne wereld. Alle desolate treurnis over de voosheid maakt het verlangen naar schoonheid bovendien des te groter, urgenter en invoelbaarder. Want die treurnis zou zonder glimpen van schoonheid helemáál ondraaglijk worden. Bovendien, juist hun ongrijpbaarheid maakt die glimpen zo onbegrijpelijk schoon. En dat is misschien de belangrijkste reden waarom ik er zelf zo van genoot, hoe ongrijpbaar hun schoonheid ook is.
June 5, 2016
якось, коли молодий ласло краснахоркаі ще багато подорожував світом, його занесло в копенгаген. і там по радіо десь між першою і другою ночі він почув дивовижне: двоє людей, чоловік і жінка, читали красиву й печальну поезію. краснахоркаі поділився відкриттям зі своєю данською подругою, але вона сказала, що не може бути, нема в них ніяких поетичних програм посеред ночі. та одного разу ця дівчина затрималася в нього допізна, і він, звісно, увімкнув ту програму. подруга послухала чудесні сумні вірші, а тоді сказала: "ласло, ти чого? це ж прогноз погоди".
"нищення й журба під небесами" – не про данію, а про китай, проте мені здається, що ця данська історія якось трохи передає настрій книжки. головний герой роману-репортажу, промовисто названий ласло штайном, мандрує китаєм у пошуках традиції, а разом із нею – прекрасного й піднесеного. цей квест майже безуспішний: з одного боку, ласло штайн занадто європеєць, у нього проблеми з етикетом і розумінням світогляду співрозмовників; з іншого, він намагається добитися від сучасного китаю відповідності легендарному минулому – не менш безнадійна справа, ніж хотіти того самого від європи. тим не менш, якщо носиш у собі красу і тугу, у тебе трохи більше шансів побачити їх у довколишньому світі, і ласло штайнові це теж іноді вдається.
"нищення й журба під небесами" – не про данію, а про китай, проте мені здається, що ця данська історія якось трохи передає настрій книжки. головний герой роману-репортажу, промовисто названий ласло штайном, мандрує китаєм у пошуках традиції, а разом із нею – прекрасного й піднесеного. цей квест майже безуспішний: з одного боку, ласло штайн занадто європеєць, у нього проблеми з етикетом і розумінням світогляду співрозмовників; з іншого, він намагається добитися від сучасного китаю відповідності легендарному минулому – не менш безнадійна справа, ніж хотіти того самого від європи. тим не менш, якщо носиш у собі красу і тугу, у тебе трохи більше шансів побачити їх у довколишньому світі, і ласло штайнові це теж іноді вдається.
February 16, 2021
I have just come to the last page of Laszlo Krasznahorkai's Destruction and sorrow beneath the Heavens. What does it mean, to say that This is a great book? It left me in tears, with the feeling that all books... poems... works of art, are the same... the same, by their very difference.
This is not a report of traveling through Southeast China. This is not about searching for the lost classical culture of Imperial China. This is a fable. An extended fable. A journey through labyrinth of questions, that are all the same question--all leading to ... bird songs, tea...emptyness, and back to the beginning.
"A way a one a last a loved along the riverrun."
There is always a way out of Suzhou... and before us, in the thick fog, supposedly there is somewhere: Jinhuashan.
This is not a report of traveling through Southeast China. This is not about searching for the lost classical culture of Imperial China. This is a fable. An extended fable. A journey through labyrinth of questions, that are all the same question--all leading to ... bird songs, tea...emptyness, and back to the beginning.
"A way a one a last a loved along the riverrun."
There is always a way out of Suzhou... and before us, in the thick fog, supposedly there is somewhere: Jinhuashan.
May 24, 2020
It is not novel idea that a European travels to and admonishes Asian countries about how they are moving away from their roots and chasing a disappointing modernity. Often these narratives are cloaked in the infantilising garb of "You don't know what you are destroying, learn from my mistakes". But what is novel in this reportage is that Laszlo K. is open about being admonished himself for his foggy ideas.
He visits China and seeks disappointment. He has become convinced that there was a glorious imperial China of Buddhism and Confucianism. This China had beautiful artefacts, serene monasteries and impeccable art. The China that he finds today is modernist, is selling its roots to the highest bidder and is only interested in commerce. Laszlo, as Stein engages in debates with many officials, intellectuals and artists of China, telling them of his disappointment. In many cases, he refuses to hear the opposing view point. "C'mon, do you really believe this?" He roles his eyes at the people opposing him, in turn making his interpreter uncomfortable.
But he records the opposite viewpoint and shares it with his reader anyway, and that is one redeeming quality of this reportage. Perhaps he is hoping that the reader will make sense of what he cannot. Many of the people sitting opposite him do come out as people playing lip sync to ideas they no longer believe in, but are peddling as party line. Then there are very wise people who remind him that modernity is not in opposition to tradition, it merely offers to regenerate tradition.And that culture in China is not external like Europe, but lives in internal thought.
There is a resurgence in seeking lost cultures, and this is fuelled evermore by tourists who leave their complicated modern lives to find the simplicity of past for a few days. We hope that someone will preserve it, take the pain of keeping the old ideas alive, so we can escape to those once in a while.
Stein doesn't know why he seeks the old. There are hints that he wants to recreate the power that intelligentsia possessed in ancient China, so he the writer and the poet of his society could feel powerful too. This made me feel sorry for this genius. Modernity does seem to have little use for intelligentsia. At least in the interim.
He visits China and seeks disappointment. He has become convinced that there was a glorious imperial China of Buddhism and Confucianism. This China had beautiful artefacts, serene monasteries and impeccable art. The China that he finds today is modernist, is selling its roots to the highest bidder and is only interested in commerce. Laszlo, as Stein engages in debates with many officials, intellectuals and artists of China, telling them of his disappointment. In many cases, he refuses to hear the opposing view point. "C'mon, do you really believe this?" He roles his eyes at the people opposing him, in turn making his interpreter uncomfortable.
But he records the opposite viewpoint and shares it with his reader anyway, and that is one redeeming quality of this reportage. Perhaps he is hoping that the reader will make sense of what he cannot. Many of the people sitting opposite him do come out as people playing lip sync to ideas they no longer believe in, but are peddling as party line. Then there are very wise people who remind him that modernity is not in opposition to tradition, it merely offers to regenerate tradition.And that culture in China is not external like Europe, but lives in internal thought.
There is a resurgence in seeking lost cultures, and this is fuelled evermore by tourists who leave their complicated modern lives to find the simplicity of past for a few days. We hope that someone will preserve it, take the pain of keeping the old ideas alive, so we can escape to those once in a while.
Stein doesn't know why he seeks the old. There are hints that he wants to recreate the power that intelligentsia possessed in ancient China, so he the writer and the poet of his society could feel powerful too. This made me feel sorry for this genius. Modernity does seem to have little use for intelligentsia. At least in the interim.
October 27, 2025
I hope that what you do will be like a mountain brook.
Perhaps it is because of the closeness of this book to me (I live in China at the moment and I've been to many of the places here, such that I can picture exactly some of the gardens László Stein is sitting in), but this felt like one of Krasznahorkai's most important works. From start to finish this book is a kind of spiritual autobiography of both a culture and a person, both of which at a remove. China is seen through foreign eyes, Stein is not Krasznahorkai, and thus we are distanced from both of them at once. And so it is fitting that we find no ultimate solace in Chinese culture, or indeed in the figure of Stein as an artist. The book begins gloomily, taking us through a barrage of Chinese heritage debased by commerce and tourism, where a culture is no longer truly lived but gawked at as in a museum. Throughout, there are dialogues with Chinese intellectuals (very happy to see the ever-illuminating and congenial Xi Chuan turn up in this - one of my fav contemporary poets!) which offer in turn confusion and aborted understanding: most stonewall Stein, refusing to see Chinese culture as anything but flourishing (and perhaps it is! Stein is nothing if not a stubborn pessimist, and his third person perspective offers us the chance to disagree). Some admit its dire straits but instead reveal to him that this has been a perennial issue - Xi Chuan for example thinks that China's cultural dislocation goes back to the late Song Dynasty!
Stein's dialogues reveal the heart of Krasznahorkai's whole art (superficially conservative, though in a way that reminds me deeply of the Eliot of The Waste Land): in the onrush of a destructive modernity, what can remain at a deeper level to connect us to a meaning?
For him - Stein once again points to himself - and for people like him, the modern appears as a destructive force, annihilating reality, which is itself expressed in an ideal form, mysterious, enchanting, uplifting...
...
In more confidential tones, Stein tells him that he seeks a metaphysical force in the background of this process which he too feels to be unstoppable. So he thinks that if evil does appear, no one will be able to do anything against it. Only a new metaphysics can be of help. But such a metaphysics cannot be built on any kind of dichotomy, it cannot be built on contradictions, on duality, on some new kind of enigmatic designation, it cannot be built on expression with its redemptive strength. He does not believe - László Stein propounds at the Tianjin housing estate - that words can have any role in it. Nor, he believes, can concepts. That is enough for now. He is, however, much more curious about Mr Yang's sincere opinion: Is there any chance at all for the creation of a new metaphysics?
Ultimately, Stein finds himself in Suzhou, sitting with a stranger. He does not know who this man is or what he does (and neither do I?! Who is Wu Xianwen?!), but the man exerts a totalizing and overwhelming influence. This whole chapter has a quality of absolute revelation: I was spellbound too by the man's words. Wu speaks of emptiness, of impossibility, of the intangible. Eventually, his words dissolve into untranslatability on the page. But what remains is a sense of genuine joy and peace.
Confronted with dying every person vanquished
Ancient person did not see Moon of today
Moon of today saw people of old.
January 6, 2026
I found the format of these travelogues very interesting. Krasznahorkai - fictionalized and perhaps caricatured as "László Stein" - travels around China in pursuit of "classical Chinese culture," dismayed at every turn as he finds commercialized temples and historical villages overrun by tourists.
I enjoyed Stein's descriptions of the places he visits, but the extended dialogues with various members of the intelligentsia (a kunqu theater manager, various writers, a fashion designer) were the real substance of the book for me. Krasznahorkai's self-insert as Stein is hardly sympathetic - he is obstinate and increasingly frustrated by his fruitless pursuit of his fantasy of "Chinese culture." On the other hand, I thought his interlocutors were thoughtful, most seemed reassured that the essence of Chinese culture will continue to adapt and survive in the face of a changing world around them.
I enjoyed Stein's descriptions of the places he visits, but the extended dialogues with various members of the intelligentsia (a kunqu theater manager, various writers, a fashion designer) were the real substance of the book for me. Krasznahorkai's self-insert as Stein is hardly sympathetic - he is obstinate and increasingly frustrated by his fruitless pursuit of his fantasy of "Chinese culture." On the other hand, I thought his interlocutors were thoughtful, most seemed reassured that the essence of Chinese culture will continue to adapt and survive in the face of a changing world around them.
February 23, 2021
"-Aztán mondja már, miért szereti annyira a szelet? (...)
-Mert nem látja senki, mégis van."
Tisztán hallottam a turistabuszok zaját, láttam a lótusszal díszített felhőkarcolókat és a láthatatlan könyvtárat, de ugyanúgy éreztem a Longjing tea illatát és ízét, és örültem annak, ahogy Shaoxingben melegített a nap.
A rombolás és bánat keserű pontossággal mutatkoznak, de a beszámoló végül nem hagy teljesen belesüllyedni ebbe az állapotba:
"És előttünk, valahol, a sűrű ködben, állítólag ott van: Jiuhuashan."
-Mert nem látja senki, mégis van."
Tisztán hallottam a turistabuszok zaját, láttam a lótusszal díszített felhőkarcolókat és a láthatatlan könyvtárat, de ugyanúgy éreztem a Longjing tea illatát és ízét, és örültem annak, ahogy Shaoxingben melegített a nap.
A rombolás és bánat keserű pontossággal mutatkoznak, de a beszámoló végül nem hagy teljesen belesüllyedni ebbe az állapotba:
"És előttünk, valahol, a sűrű ködben, állítólag ott van: Jiuhuashan."
December 14, 2017
A curious work, that opens with a stunning sequence of two European tourists attempting to find a Buddhist shrine on a fog-shrouded mountain. It is, in fits, as brilliant and insightful as Seiobo There Below, but it lacks that novel's uniformity of theme. Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens often feels as aimless and disoriented as its characters - a mass of fragments gathering force but never a complete idea. At times it reads more like an experimental travel journal than a novel.
June 9, 2022
I was a bit cautious after the "az urgai fogoly" because that book did not resonate with me but this documentary / road trip was way much more engaging. I liked the structure of the book changing between description and discussions.
It can be read without knowing anything about the previous book. Great read.
[HU - Kindle]
It can be read without knowing anything about the previous book. Great read.
[HU - Kindle]
Read
August 27, 2023A treat to get a Laszlo travel diary even if the first 3/4 is a bit repetitive (seemed like the same interview happened 3-4 times). I found the last few sections to be revelatory and overall I came away from this with an even stronger bond with the author.
March 15, 2024
torturous and embarrassing orientalism
October 7, 2020
With the big-name English literary novelists still seemingly stuck in a corduroyed rut of well-bred people fiddling about in big houses over problems that aren't worth a fart (reading the blurb for new books by Zadie Smith, H. Jacobson and the increasingly smug Ian McEwan made me want to take heroin - `supper at Julian's is one of the great pleasures' said McEwan recently in an interview) and American writers becoming as conservative and pragmatic as their politicians, Kraznahorkai arrives with his giant flamethrower of brilliance.
"the contemporary Hungarian master of apocalypse who inspires comparison with Gogol and Melville" is writing about Modern China.
Fantastic. Genius. Wonderful. Wonderful...
"the contemporary Hungarian master of apocalypse who inspires comparison with Gogol and Melville" is writing about Modern China.
Fantastic. Genius. Wonderful. Wonderful...
December 11, 2022
This is a very different Krasznahorki. It's not really a novel, a travel memoir? Maybe an essay, or all of the above. It's so different from his other work that I wouldn't recommend this to anyone that's looking to get into his work even though I did enjoy it overall. It doesn't really answer any of the questions it puts out there, I don't think it really needed too but I can see why some may find this aimless. Good but not one that represents his body of work.
May 2, 2022
Finally returned to this one when I was ready for it--I like Laszlo Stein's search for an authentic classical Chinese culture, especially through all of the dialogues he has. The last chapter is especially fun, when we see an approximate answer.
January 23, 2019
Read the first sentence, and loved it so much. Same experience of being lost and found at Chinese long-distance bus stations ;)
November 19, 2025
Here is a book that does not merely document despair—it walks it, breathes it, and moves through it like a sombre pilgrimage. Reading Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens felt like being pulled by the sleeve through the ruins of a civilisation while the guide whispers relentlessly in your ear, refusing to let you look away.
I read it mostly at night, at a small desk where the glow of a solitary lamp carved out a bubble of light in an otherwise sleeping house. The effect was uncanny: the silence outside seemed complicit in the very erasures Krasznahorkai was describing.
This is reportage, yes, but reportage only in the sense that Dante’s Inferno is a guidebook. Krasznahorkai travels through China determined to find traces of classical Chinese culture, and instead finds its ghosts—crumbling temples, neglected statues, and landscapes stripped of their spiritual marrow.
His despair deepens with each encounter, and reading his account felt like watching someone search for a childhood home only to discover that the entire neighbourhood has been replaced with concrete shells. What struck me immediately was the intensity of Krasznahorkai’s grief. This is not the grief of an outsider observing the fall of a foreign tradition; it is the grief of a mourner who believes a part of humanity itself is dying.
I found myself moving slowly through the text, because each page carried the weight of an accusation—not just against China’s bureaucratic machinery, but against modernity itself. Krasznahorkai is furious, but his fury is quiet and persistent, like a knife that scrapes the same bone over and over. The book’s power comes from this relentless tone: not hysterical, never rhetorical, simply sorrow sharpened into observation.
As he catalogues the destruction of temples, the flattening of historical sites, and the disintegration of aesthetics, it becomes clear that what he mourns is not architecture but a worldview—a way of being that valued inner refinement over outward spectacle.
At one point, sitting alone in the dim light, I found myself suddenly aware of how much of my own intellectual life depends on the fragile survival of cultural memory. What happens when the philosophies that shaped a civilisation are reduced to museum labels or souvenir slogans? Krasznahorkai seems to ask this question not out of academic curiosity but out of existential dread. And the deeper he travels into China, the clearer it becomes that the destruction is not random but systemic. Modern China, in his portrayal, does not simply forget its past; it bulldozes it.
Yet the book’s narrative brilliance lies not in denunciation but in the contrast between Krasznahorkai’s idealised image of classical China and the harsh, cluttered, noise-soaked reality he finds. This tension becomes almost unbearable. His devotion to classical Chinese poetry and philosophy makes him vulnerable to heartbreak at every turn.
Reading these sections, I felt like I was walking with him through the rubble of an abandoned temple, the wind carrying fragments of Tang verse that dissolve before they reach the ground.
Krasznahorkai’s exhaustion becomes the reader’s exhaustion. His sorrow seeped into me so thoroughly that I often had to pause, close the book, and simply sit. And yet I always returned to it, drawn by the purity of his voice—a purity that emerges precisely from his despair.
This is one of the most emotionally demanding travelogues I have ever read, not because it dramatises suffering but because it records cultural loss with unsentimental precision. The effect is devastating.
Slowly, unbearably, the book reveals itself not as an indictment of China alone but as a mirror for the whole world. The destruction Krasznahorkai witnesses—of culture, of aesthetics, of spiritual depth—is not unique.
It is the signature of the age we live in, an age that worships speed, utility, and consumer spectacle. I began to see my own world differently: abandoned libraries, ignored art, languages that are slowly dying, and the erosion of interior life by the noise of screens. Krasznahorkai’s China is merely the most extreme manifestation of a universal crisis.
And yet, paradoxically, the book is also an act of hope—because to grieve so deeply is to affirm that something precious still exists, that it is worth mourning. By articulating his sorrow so meticulously, Krasznahorkai prevents the total erasure he fears. The book becomes a vessel for cultural memory when the physical sites have been lost. And in this way, the act of writing becomes resistance.
When I finally finished the book, sometime past midnight, I felt wrung out. But I also felt that I had accompanied a fellow scholar through a landscape of ruins that demanded witness.
His despair became mine, but so did his commitment: that culture, true culture, cannot be preserved without vigilance, devotion, and sorrow.
And though the heavens above may tremble, someone must remain to record the destruction beneath them.
I read it mostly at night, at a small desk where the glow of a solitary lamp carved out a bubble of light in an otherwise sleeping house. The effect was uncanny: the silence outside seemed complicit in the very erasures Krasznahorkai was describing.
This is reportage, yes, but reportage only in the sense that Dante’s Inferno is a guidebook. Krasznahorkai travels through China determined to find traces of classical Chinese culture, and instead finds its ghosts—crumbling temples, neglected statues, and landscapes stripped of their spiritual marrow.
His despair deepens with each encounter, and reading his account felt like watching someone search for a childhood home only to discover that the entire neighbourhood has been replaced with concrete shells. What struck me immediately was the intensity of Krasznahorkai’s grief. This is not the grief of an outsider observing the fall of a foreign tradition; it is the grief of a mourner who believes a part of humanity itself is dying.
I found myself moving slowly through the text, because each page carried the weight of an accusation—not just against China’s bureaucratic machinery, but against modernity itself. Krasznahorkai is furious, but his fury is quiet and persistent, like a knife that scrapes the same bone over and over. The book’s power comes from this relentless tone: not hysterical, never rhetorical, simply sorrow sharpened into observation.
As he catalogues the destruction of temples, the flattening of historical sites, and the disintegration of aesthetics, it becomes clear that what he mourns is not architecture but a worldview—a way of being that valued inner refinement over outward spectacle.
At one point, sitting alone in the dim light, I found myself suddenly aware of how much of my own intellectual life depends on the fragile survival of cultural memory. What happens when the philosophies that shaped a civilisation are reduced to museum labels or souvenir slogans? Krasznahorkai seems to ask this question not out of academic curiosity but out of existential dread. And the deeper he travels into China, the clearer it becomes that the destruction is not random but systemic. Modern China, in his portrayal, does not simply forget its past; it bulldozes it.
Yet the book’s narrative brilliance lies not in denunciation but in the contrast between Krasznahorkai’s idealised image of classical China and the harsh, cluttered, noise-soaked reality he finds. This tension becomes almost unbearable. His devotion to classical Chinese poetry and philosophy makes him vulnerable to heartbreak at every turn.
Reading these sections, I felt like I was walking with him through the rubble of an abandoned temple, the wind carrying fragments of Tang verse that dissolve before they reach the ground.
Krasznahorkai’s exhaustion becomes the reader’s exhaustion. His sorrow seeped into me so thoroughly that I often had to pause, close the book, and simply sit. And yet I always returned to it, drawn by the purity of his voice—a purity that emerges precisely from his despair.
This is one of the most emotionally demanding travelogues I have ever read, not because it dramatises suffering but because it records cultural loss with unsentimental precision. The effect is devastating.
Slowly, unbearably, the book reveals itself not as an indictment of China alone but as a mirror for the whole world. The destruction Krasznahorkai witnesses—of culture, of aesthetics, of spiritual depth—is not unique.
It is the signature of the age we live in, an age that worships speed, utility, and consumer spectacle. I began to see my own world differently: abandoned libraries, ignored art, languages that are slowly dying, and the erosion of interior life by the noise of screens. Krasznahorkai’s China is merely the most extreme manifestation of a universal crisis.
And yet, paradoxically, the book is also an act of hope—because to grieve so deeply is to affirm that something precious still exists, that it is worth mourning. By articulating his sorrow so meticulously, Krasznahorkai prevents the total erasure he fears. The book becomes a vessel for cultural memory when the physical sites have been lost. And in this way, the act of writing becomes resistance.
When I finally finished the book, sometime past midnight, I felt wrung out. But I also felt that I had accompanied a fellow scholar through a landscape of ruins that demanded witness.
His despair became mine, but so did his commitment: that culture, true culture, cannot be preserved without vigilance, devotion, and sorrow.
And though the heavens above may tremble, someone must remain to record the destruction beneath them.
July 8, 2025
Finished this one a couple of weeks ago but have been trying to figure out what I want to say about it. While in a (fictional?) travelogue format, it definitely retains many of the characteristics that readers of Krasznahorkai have become familiar with. And while it's not one of my favorites by Krasznahorkai, any book by him is a worthwhile read.
Mostly it seems like a work in deep conversation with his novel War and War, in that there is a search or fascination with the nostalgic ideal of some better golden time. In War and War it was an idealized Hellenistic tradition, while in this work it's an idealized Chinese tradition that lies at the book's core.
I've read some negative reviews that accuse the main character - and by extension Krasznahorkai because the main character is set up to be a stand-in for the author - of a form of orientalism. A blindness and idealizing or pigeonholing of culture, in this case Chinese culture. The main character goes to China looking for signs and experiences of ancient, traditional Chinese culture and is cranky and angry for much of the time when he doesn't find it. He accuses the Chinese people he meets of having lost their culture. Turning their back on it. And no matter how many times he is told that the culture and tradition still live on regardless of what contemporary culture's surface looks like he argues back that he can't see it. And in this sense, yes, the main character seems quite culturally insensitive and dense in his understanding.
But this main character, while seeming like a stand-in for Krasznahorkai, is in fact NOT Krasznahorkai. The author is using his stand-in to make a subtle but important point. For while the author obviously has an interest or need to find these golden traditions and moments in a life that often seems bleak and having lost its way, I believe he is using the main character to show all the mistakes that can be made in this search. For in fact, the main character does not remain static but grows by his experience. Learns, slowly but finally, that he has been searching in the wrong places. Looking for pre-conceived objects of proof instead of seeing the many examples of proof in front of him the whole time.
I believe the Big Turn comes in the chapter entitled "Mama." And what a strange chapter indeed! Because this very much seems like a scene in which the main character (who we've been led to believe is Hungarian) is talking to his mom (who seems very much Chinese). It felt unsettling. Beguiling. And definitely out of leftfield, both in the chapter's style but also how it feels to come from out of nowhere. Did I miss something all along? Could it be that the main character is from Hungary but is of Chinese descent? That sort of changes everything in a way. My whole brain twisted in my cranium.
And after this chapter it seems that suddenly the main character is able to start seeing what he is searching for all around. Although of course the real kicker, the scene where it all clicks together for main character and reader, is the scene with the Chinese poet. An absolutely beautiful, magical scene that demonstrates that no matter the cheap consumerism, gaudy tourist traps, cheaply refurbished shrines, tradition lives on. Within the people and their souls regardless of what any surface looks like.
And in fact, after this important scene we are taken back to an earlier scene in which the main character and everyone around him were troubled greatly by the acts of an older women. We are taken back to see it with our new eyes and understanding. to see and feel it in a completely new way. Same scene. Now completely recast. Brilliant and satisfying ending.
If I find myself giving this a lower rating (3.5) it might be because the many lists of names and places, for me, got in the way of the story a bit. Maybe it felt necessary to Krasznahorkai to fill out that travelogue narrative, but I just happened to have found it a bit cumbersome.
Mostly it seems like a work in deep conversation with his novel War and War, in that there is a search or fascination with the nostalgic ideal of some better golden time. In War and War it was an idealized Hellenistic tradition, while in this work it's an idealized Chinese tradition that lies at the book's core.
I've read some negative reviews that accuse the main character - and by extension Krasznahorkai because the main character is set up to be a stand-in for the author - of a form of orientalism. A blindness and idealizing or pigeonholing of culture, in this case Chinese culture. The main character goes to China looking for signs and experiences of ancient, traditional Chinese culture and is cranky and angry for much of the time when he doesn't find it. He accuses the Chinese people he meets of having lost their culture. Turning their back on it. And no matter how many times he is told that the culture and tradition still live on regardless of what contemporary culture's surface looks like he argues back that he can't see it. And in this sense, yes, the main character seems quite culturally insensitive and dense in his understanding.
But this main character, while seeming like a stand-in for Krasznahorkai, is in fact NOT Krasznahorkai. The author is using his stand-in to make a subtle but important point. For while the author obviously has an interest or need to find these golden traditions and moments in a life that often seems bleak and having lost its way, I believe he is using the main character to show all the mistakes that can be made in this search. For in fact, the main character does not remain static but grows by his experience. Learns, slowly but finally, that he has been searching in the wrong places. Looking for pre-conceived objects of proof instead of seeing the many examples of proof in front of him the whole time.
I believe the Big Turn comes in the chapter entitled "Mama." And what a strange chapter indeed! Because this very much seems like a scene in which the main character (who we've been led to believe is Hungarian) is talking to his mom (who seems very much Chinese). It felt unsettling. Beguiling. And definitely out of leftfield, both in the chapter's style but also how it feels to come from out of nowhere. Did I miss something all along? Could it be that the main character is from Hungary but is of Chinese descent? That sort of changes everything in a way. My whole brain twisted in my cranium.
And after this chapter it seems that suddenly the main character is able to start seeing what he is searching for all around. Although of course the real kicker, the scene where it all clicks together for main character and reader, is the scene with the Chinese poet. An absolutely beautiful, magical scene that demonstrates that no matter the cheap consumerism, gaudy tourist traps, cheaply refurbished shrines, tradition lives on. Within the people and their souls regardless of what any surface looks like.
And in fact, after this important scene we are taken back to an earlier scene in which the main character and everyone around him were troubled greatly by the acts of an older women. We are taken back to see it with our new eyes and understanding. to see and feel it in a completely new way. Same scene. Now completely recast. Brilliant and satisfying ending.
If I find myself giving this a lower rating (3.5) it might be because the many lists of names and places, for me, got in the way of the story a bit. Maybe it felt necessary to Krasznahorkai to fill out that travelogue narrative, but I just happened to have found it a bit cumbersome.
Read
October 8, 2020For a while I was unsure of how I felt about this book. In it, Krasznahorkai (barely disguised as Laszlo Stein in this book) travels to China in search of a culture that has escaped the grip of modernity and capitalism. It's easy to accuse him of orientalism and I initially did, but the more I read the more I feel he was making fun of his own naivety.
"Stein" makes an ass out of himself throughout the conversations he has with the Chinese monks, artists, theater directors, etc. He’s incredibly guilty of fetishizing the past and a culture he doesn’t belong to. He consistently berates his hosts with questions about why China has finally surrendered to modernity, if there are any traces of the “classical spirit,” if a return to Confucius is possible. Consistently, his hosts tell him the classical spirit still exists and he refuses to see it. He does refuse to see it. Instead, and it is very clear, he seeks a land free from time. A land that hasn’t changed in a thousand years.
What's most interesting is watching Krasznahorkai in his postmodern mode desperately seeking out something so structuralist. The last 15 pages are the most confounding for that reason. The writing here becomes even more opaque while he finally finds two new friends who offer him them redemption he has been seeking. The ancient culture does still exist and it's exactly how he has pictured it. I'm guessing this is just Krasznahorkai's confirmation bias joke.
In the end, I spent most of my time bouncing this off of Jameson's "Postmodernism," a book I desperately wish I understood, and I think the two, for me, fostered a deeper understanding of the other.
"Stein" makes an ass out of himself throughout the conversations he has with the Chinese monks, artists, theater directors, etc. He’s incredibly guilty of fetishizing the past and a culture he doesn’t belong to. He consistently berates his hosts with questions about why China has finally surrendered to modernity, if there are any traces of the “classical spirit,” if a return to Confucius is possible. Consistently, his hosts tell him the classical spirit still exists and he refuses to see it. He does refuse to see it. Instead, and it is very clear, he seeks a land free from time. A land that hasn’t changed in a thousand years.
What's most interesting is watching Krasznahorkai in his postmodern mode desperately seeking out something so structuralist. The last 15 pages are the most confounding for that reason. The writing here becomes even more opaque while he finally finds two new friends who offer him them redemption he has been seeking. The ancient culture does still exist and it's exactly how he has pictured it. I'm guessing this is just Krasznahorkai's confirmation bias joke.
In the end, I spent most of my time bouncing this off of Jameson's "Postmodernism," a book I desperately wish I understood, and I think the two, for me, fostered a deeper understanding of the other.
May 17, 2019
A travel memoir by acclaimed Hungarian author Krazsnahorkai, overall had mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand I admired the vivid pictures created by the author depicting the cultural heritage sites of china and their transcendent value throughout history. On the other hand, the tone was so morose, bleak, and somewhat overly judgemental attitude of the author towards Chinese way of life (the title should've been a hint). Having been in China for just under a year, I've realized the perceptions of the west towards it are far too critical and disparaging. Comparing what a society "should" be like based on our own preconditioned mind isn't fair when determining the value of another culture. One simple has to have an open mind, even when other cultures are vastly different from ones own, embracing it and learning to understand local traditions is crucial to understanding the culture of the people. After a thorough discussion of the book with a fellow foreigner I've realized that the story's essence and meaning has a lot more than meets the eye.
July 19, 2017
De schrijver reist door china op zoek naar het oude klassieke China. Dat bestaat natuurlijk niet meer, althans is niet zomaar te vinden. Hij wordt wat kregel bij alle toeristen en bij de vercommercialisering van zo ongeveer alles daar. Hij probeert in gesprek te gaan met allerlei intellectuelen om zo zijn gelijk te halen. De laatste laat hem uiteindelijk zien, dat wat er in China gaande is, over de hele wereld - en ook in Europa - gaande is. Het is wel erg mooi geschreven, minder chaotisch dan zijn andere boeken. Mooie beschrijvingen van een aantal plaatsen in China, waardoor je zin krijgt om er naar toe te gaan.
November 11, 2025
Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens
László Krasznahorkai
The story (partly fictional) Lazlo Stein goes to China so as to find living remainders of the ancient classical Chinese tradition.
Stein wishes to reconnect with the tradition, because he considers the tradition spiritually rich, and he is himself looking for spirituality in his life.
Stein, accompanied by an interpreter, seeing many significant sites, well as common people.
What is interesting about this book is a modern person, fascinated by the spiritual richness of an ancient tradition and appalled by the spiritual Emptiness of the contemporary situation.
Interesting read that lagged at times but informative.
László Krasznahorkai
The story (partly fictional) Lazlo Stein goes to China so as to find living remainders of the ancient classical Chinese tradition.
Stein wishes to reconnect with the tradition, because he considers the tradition spiritually rich, and he is himself looking for spirituality in his life.
Stein, accompanied by an interpreter, seeing many significant sites, well as common people.
What is interesting about this book is a modern person, fascinated by the spiritual richness of an ancient tradition and appalled by the spiritual Emptiness of the contemporary situation.
Interesting read that lagged at times but informative.
November 23, 2025
Having been to many of the overcommercialised historical attractions (and seen a little of the New China's attraction to classicism as an aesthetic without substance...), I share Stein's same question and it was good to go on the journey together. There is no answer to it. But culture is a way of life, and somebody needs to live it
December 15, 2017
Merece una canción funeraria al terminar de leer.
December 9, 2020
Very whiny
August 23, 2023
Profound
December 3, 2024
Splendid, but in a way that likely confuses both those expecting another Krasznahorkai spiraling tome of madness or those stumbling into Krasznahorkai for the first time.
December 1, 2025
Slow burn. Take your time, and read it in your pet's company.
June 1, 2023
“He’s not a curmudgeon, he’s a Hungarian!”
Holy weeping at the end of the book, and until then missing at least two worlds and as many jokes.
Holy weeping at the end of the book, and until then missing at least two worlds and as many jokes.
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