This podcast is a presentation of ⁠The Meow Library⁠.

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025 has been awarded to the Hungarian author ⁠László Krasznahorkai⁠, “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art," the Swiss Academy announced in a press release this morning.

To further reaffirm the power of art, we expound on the implications of Krasznahorkai's Nobel win in a language even more impenetrable than Hungarian.

This podcast is sustained by sales of the equally visionary ⁠Meow: A Novel⁠.

"My prayers are my poems are my prayers."

- Matthew McConaughey, Poems and Prayers

And now, some prayers for your cat.

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library.

Matthew McConaughey's Poems and Prayers is available from Penguin Random House and wherever books are sold.

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library.

Max Lawton’s translation of Schattenfroh represents not merely a feat of linguistic dexterity, but an act of transubstantiation: he renders into English a text whose very atmosphere seems to resist Anglophone sensibilities, and does so with an elegance that preserves both its rigor and its strange vitality. His choices are never pedantic, never ornamental for their own sake; rather, they reveal the deep rhythms of the original prose as though the English version had always been latent in the original. In homage to Lawton's peerless achievement, the Meow Library makes this humble offering, derived from the first 11 pages of Schattenfroh in the original.

This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut translation, Meow: A Novel.

Max Lawton's brilliant rendition of Schattenfroh is available now from Deep Vellum.