STOCKHOLM The Nobel Prize in Literature was Oct. 9 awarded to Laszlo Krasznahorkai, considered by many as Hungary's most important living author whose works explore themes of postmodern dystopia and melancholy. The Swedish Academy honored him "for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art." Krasznahorkai, 71, is "a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterized