Kristof was born on October 30, 1935. At the age of 21 she had to leave her country when the Hungarian anti-communist revolution was suppressed by the Soviet military. She, her husband (who used to be her history teacher at school) and their 4 month-old daughter escaped to Neuchâtel in Switzerland. After 5 years of loneliness and exile, she quit her work in a factory and left her husband. She started studying French and began to write novels in that language.

Agota Kristof's first steps as a writer were in the realm of poetry and theater (John et Joe, Un rat qui passe), which is a facet of her works that did not have as great an impact as her trilogy. In 1986 Kristof’s first novel, The Notebook appeared. It was the beginning of a moving trilogy. The sequel titled The Proof came 2 years later. The third part was published in 1991 under the title The Third Lie. The most important themes of this trilogy are war and destruction, love and loneliness, desire and loss, truth and fiction.

Agota Kristof received the European prize for French literature for The Notebook. This novel was translated in more than 30 languages.

In 1995 she published a new novel, Yesterday.

Agota Kristof also wrote a book called L'analphabète (in English The Illiterate) and published in 2004. This is an autobiographical text. It explores her love of reading as a young child, and we travel with her to boarding school, and over the border to Austria, and then to Switzerland. Forced to leave her country due to the failure of the anti-communist rebellion, she hopes for a better life in Zurich.

Her latest work is a collection of short stories entitled C'est égal that was published in 2005 in Paris. The majority of her works were published by Editions du Seuil in Paris.

She has two new short stories published at Mini Zoe collection entitled "Ou es tu Mathias" and "Line, le temps". The names Mathias and Line are from her previous novels

The video game Mother 3 was influenced by The Notebook's major themes. Main characters Lucas and Claus are named after the book's narrators.

Brucio nel vento (Burning in the Wind, 2002) is a film based on the novel Hier (Yesterday), directed by Silvio Soldini. Le Continent K. (1998) and Agota Kristof, 9 ans plus tard ... (2006) are two short documentaries about Agota Kristof directed by Eric Bergkraut.

• 1986: Le grand cahier / The Notebook
• 1988: La Preuve / The Proof
• 1991: Le Troisième mensonge / The Third Lie
• 1998: L'Heure grise et autres pièces
• 1995: Hier / Yesterday
• 2004: L’analphabète
• 2005: C'est égal

English translations

• The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels, Grove Press (June 23, 1997). ISBN 978-0802135063
• Yesterday, Random House of Canada (1997). ISBN 978-0099268079