New Delhi, Oct. 19 -- I was reading Laszló Krasznahorkai and I thought early humans must have invented entertainment to escape from that feeling. It felt like living in a moment where a voice makes a long, dreary and important comment on it before letting it pass, as though time is a string of beads that moves from one solemn observation to another.

That is not what the Nobel Prize committee said a few days ago when it awarded the Hungarian writer its Literature award. The panel said the award was for his "compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art." But what 'apocalyptic terror'? Where? Not in his novels. Not in the real world as we know it, and as we know what 'apocalypse' ...