Karl Ove Knausgaard

Don Bartlett

An autobiographical novel focuses on a young man trying to make sense of his place in the disjointed world that surrounds him.

My Struggle:

From the internationally bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard, a sprawling and deeply human novel that questions the responsibilities we have toward one another and ourselves—and the limits of what we can understand about life itself In 1986, twenty-year-old Syvert Løyning returns from the military to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One evening, his dead father comes to him in a dream. Realizing that he doesn’t really know who his father was, Syvert begins to investigate his life and finds clues pointing to the Soviet Union. What he learns changes his past and undermines the entire notion of who he is. But when his mother becomes ill, and he must care for his little brother, Joar, on his own, he no longer has time or space for lofty speculations. In present-day Russia, Alevtina Kotov, a biologist working at Moscow University, is traveling with her young son to the home of her stepfather, to celebrate his eightieth birthday. As a student, Alevtina was bright, curious and ambitious, asking the big questions about life and human consciousness. But as she approaches middle-age, most of that drive has gone, and she finds herself in a place she doesn’t want to be, without really understanding how she got there. Her stepfather, a musician, raised her as his own daughter, and she was never interested in learning about her biological father; when she finally starts looking into him, she learns that he died many years ago and left two sons, Joar and Syvert. Years later, when Syvert and Alevtina meet in Moscow, two very different approaches to life’s great mystery emerge. And as a bright star appears in the sky, it illuminates the wonder of human existence and the mysteries that exist beyond our own worldview. Set against the political and cultural backdrop of both the 1980s and the present day, The Wolves of Eternity is an expansive and affecting book about relations—to one another, to nature, to the dead.

A Novel

The Wolves of Eternity

James Joyce

Seamus Deane

Roman Muradov

Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR "Knausgaard is among the finest writers alive." —Dwight Garner, New York Times The Morning Star is an astonishing, ambitious, and rich novel about what we don't understand, and our attempts to make sense of our world nonetheless. One long night in August, Arne and Tove are staying with their children in their summer house in southern Norway. Their friend Egil has his own place nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is flying home from a Bible seminar, questioning her marriage. Journalist Jostein is out drinking for the night, while his wife, Turid, a nurse at a psychiatric care unit, is on a nightshift when one of her patients escapes. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears blazing in the sky. It brings with it a mysterious sense of foreboding. Strange things start to happen as nine lives come together under the star. Hundreds of crabs amass on the road as Arne drives at night; Jostein receives a call about a death metal band found brutally murdered in a Satanic ritual; Kathrine conducts a funeral service for a man she met at the airport—but is he actually dead?

The Morning Star

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s most daring and macabre novel yet, The School of Night is an indelible tale about dark temptations, moral depravity, and what we forget when we bargain with the devil. London. 1985. A city rife with possibility and desire. One young man who wants it all. Kristian Hadeland, young and ambitious, has moved to London to study photography. His family never understood him, and his fellow photography students bore him. He throws himself headfirst into the bustling art scene, where he meets Hans, an eccentric Dutch artist. Kristian knows he and his art are destined for more, and with Hans, the future he yearns for is possible—as long as Kristian is willing to sacrifice everything and stop at nothing. Twenty-four years later, Kristian has achieved everything he’s ever desired, and a major retrospective of his work is being held in New York City. But as Kristian’s past catches up to him, his world begins to crumble. Success comes at a price, but is Kristian prepared to pay it? In a thrilling twist on Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Karl Ove Knausgaard masterfully spins a dark cautionary tale about the lengths we will go to achieve success—and how far we are willing to fall. His most daring and macabre novel yet, The School of Night is an indelible tale about dark temptations, moral depravity, and what we forget when we bargain with the devil.

A novel

The School of Night

An NPR Best Book of 2023 “Knausgaard is back, with a compulsively readable new novel.” —The Washington Post “The Wolves of Eternity, like some 19th-century Russian novel, wrestles with the great contraries: the materialist view and the religious, the world as cosmic accident versus embodiment of some radiant intention. Is this world shot through with meaning or not? Has there ever been a better time to ask?” —Sven Birkerts, The New York Times Book Review From the internationally bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard, a sprawling and deeply human novel that questions the responsibilities we have toward one another and ourselves—and the limits of what we can understand about life itself In 1986, twenty-year-old Syvert Løyning returns from the military to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One evening, his dead father comes to him in a dream. Realizing that he doesn’t really know who his father was, Syvert begins to investigate his life and finds clues pointing to the Soviet Union. What he learns changes his past and undermines the entire notion of who he is. But when his mother becomes ill, and he must care for his little brother, Joar, on his own, he no longer has time or space for lofty speculations. In present-day Russia, Alevtina Kotov, a biologist working at Moscow University, is traveling with her young son to the home of her stepfather, to celebrate his eightieth birthday. As a student, Alevtina was bright, curious and ambitious, asking the big questions about life and human consciousness. But as she approaches middle-age, most of that drive has gone, and she finds herself in a place she doesn’t want to be, without really understanding how she got there. Her stepfather, a musician, raised her as his own daughter, and she was never interested in learning about her biological father; when she finally starts looking into him, she learns that he died many years ago and left two sons, Joar and Syvert. Years later, when Syvert and Alevtina meet in Moscow, two very different approaches to life emerge. And as a bright star appears in the sky, it illuminates the wonder of human existence and the mysteries that exist beyond our own worldview. Set against the political and cultural backdrop of both the 1980s and the present day, The Wolves of Eternity is an expansive and affecting book about relations—to one another, to nature, to the dead.

The transporting, standalone continuation of the acclaimed, apocalyptically-charged novel The Morning Star—the second in a bold new series. In 1986, twenty-year-old Syvert Løyning returns from the military to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One evening, his dead father comes to him in a dream. Realizing that he doesn’t really know who his father was, Syvert begins to investigate his life and finds clues pointing to the Soviet Union. What he learns changes his past and undermines the entire notion of who he is. But when his mother becomes ill, and he must care for his little brother, Joar, on his own, he no longer has time or space for lofty speculations. In present-day Russia, Alevtina Kotov, a biologist working at Moscow University, is traveling with her young son to the home of her stepfather, to celebrate his eightieth birthday. As a student, Alevtina was bright, curious and ambitious, asking the big questions about life and human consciousness. But as she approaches middle-age, most of that drive has gone, and she finds herself in a place she doesn’t want to be, without really understanding how she got there. Her stepfather, a musician, raised her as his own daughter, and she was never interested in learning about her biological father; when she finally starts looking into him, she learns that he died many years ago and left two sons, Joar and Syvert. Years later, when Syvert and Alevtina meet in Moscow, two very different approaches to life emerge. And as a bright star appears in the sky, it illuminates the wonder of human existence and the mysteries that exist beyond our own worldview. Set against the political and cultural backdrop of both the 1980s and the present day, The Wolves of Eternity is an expansive and affecting book about relations—to one another, to nature, to the dead.

A major new work from the author of the renowned My Struggle series, MORNING STAR is an astonishing, ambitious, and rich novel about what we don't understand, and our attempts to make sense of our world nonetheless It's a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in Sørlandet. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar, the journalist Jostein is out on the town, and his wife Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is. Is there a star burning itself out? Why then has no one seen it before? Or is it a brand new star? Slowly the interest in the news subsides, and life goes on, but not quite as before, for unusual phenomena begin to occur on the fringes of human existence. Over these days in August, the characters the novel follows will each understand what is happening differently, and all face new struggles in their own lives. The Morning Star is a novel about what we do not understand, about great drama seen through the limited lens of little lives. But first and foremost, it is a novel about what happens when the dark forces in the world are set free.

Martin Aitken

Essays

In the Land of the Cyclops

Min kamp

From this New York Times bestselling author comes a collection of ambitious, remarkably erudite essays on art, literature, culture, and philosophy. In the Land of the Cyclops is Karl Ove Knausgaard’s first collection of essays to be published in English, and these brilliant and wide-ranging pieces meditate on themes familiar from his groundbreaking fiction. Here, Knausgaard discusses Madame Bovary, the Northern Lights, Ingmar Bergman, and the work of an array of writers and visual artists, including Knut Hamsun, Michel Houellebecq, Anselm Kiefer and Cindy Sherman. These essays beautifully capture Knausgaard’s ability to mediate between the deeply personal and the universal, demonstrating his trademark self-scrutiny and his deep longing to authentically see, understand, and experience the world.

Istemsiz - Neden Yaziyorum?

From the New York Times bestselling author of the My Struggle series comes a collection of ambitious, remarkably erudite essays on art, literature, culture, and philosophy. In the Land of the Cyclops is Karl Ove Knausgaard's first collection of essays to be published in English. In these wide-ranging pieces, he reflects openly and with penetrating intelligence on Ingmar Bergman's notebooks, Anselm Kiefer, the northern lights, Madame Bovary, Rembrandt, and the role of an editor. Accompanied by black-and-white reproductions throughout, these essays illuminate Cindy Sherman's shadowlands, the sublime mystery of Sally Mann's vision, and the serious play of Francesca Woodman. They capture Knausgaard's remarkable ability to mediate between the personal and the universal, between life and art. Each piece glimmers with his candor and his longing to authentically see, understand, and experience the world.

The fifth installment in the epic six-volume My Struggle cycle is here, highly anticipated by Karl Ove Knausgaard's dedicated fan club—and the first in the cycle to be published separately in Canada. The young Karl Ove moves to Bergen to attend the Writing Academy. It turns out to be a huge disappointment: he wants so much, knows so little, and achieves nothing. His contemporaries have their manuscripts accepted and make their debuts while he begins to feel the best he can do is to write about literature. With no apparent reason to feel hopeful, he continues his exploration of and love for books and reading. Gradually his writing changes; his relationship with the world around him changes too. This becomes a novel about new, strong friendships and a serious relationship that transforms him until the novel reaches the existential pivotal point: his father dies, Karl Ove makes his debut as a writer and everything disintegrates. He flees to Sweden, to avoid family and friends.

My Struggle: Book 5

Some Rain Must Fall

'Strikingly humane, unsettling, and wholly unique' Ferdia Lennon ‘Ferociously readable. . . I still can't get enough' The Times If no one ever died, what would happen then? For several days, a bright new star in the sky above Norway has blazed over the restless lives of those below. Tove, an artist, is consumed by intense creativity as she spirals towards psychosis. Line falls in love with a musician named Valdemar and is lured to a secret black metal gig in a remote forest. Geir, a policeman, is investigating a ritual murder but chances upon something more horrifying even than the bodies in the trees – the last bodies he sees, because, as undertaker Syvert is the first to realise, people have stopped dying since the star appeared. What is haunting the world – and why? As profound as it is thrilling, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Third Realm is a breathtaking novel about ordinary lives on the cusp of irrevocable change. PRAISE FOR THE THIRD REALM ‘A visionary epic' Guardian ‘One of the most genuinely suspenseful, alluring books I’ve ever read. . . This book made me afraid of the dark again.’ Brandon Taylor, Washington Post ‘As accessible and creepy as anything by Stephen King and as addictive as your favourite TV drama series. There is no writer I would rather devour’ Spectator PRAISE FOR KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD: 'Karl Ove Knausgaard is one of my literary heroes' Torrey Peters 'Addictive' Daily Telegraph 'Knausgaard retains the ability to lock you, as if in a tractor beam, into his storytelling' New York Times ‘Casts an existential spell. . . captivating' Financial Times

The addictive new novel from the Sunday Times bestseller

The Third Realm

'An almost dangerously immersive reading experience that will completely take over your life... utterly captivating' Martin MacInnes, Booker longlisted author of IN ASCENSION London. 1985. A city rife with possibility and desire. One young man who wants it all. Kristian Hadeland, newly arrived in the city, seethes with ambition and contempt. His family in Norway never understood him; his fellow photography students bore him. But he knows he and his art are destined for more. Then he meets Hans, an eccentric Dutch artist. With Hans, the future Kristian yearns for is tangible. All art is possible. Any line can be crossed. But success comes at a price. And when Kristian does the unthinkable, will he be prepared to pay it? Electrifying and unflinching, The School of Night is a singular novel about artistic creation and human corruption. It is the story of one terrible man's rise and fall, and a reckoning with the darkest parts of human nature. 'Mysterious, unsettling, thought provoking, unpredictable and darkly entertaining' Colin Barrett, Booker longlisted author of WILD HOUSES ‘Dark and precise about the underside of human desire and connection. . . painfully funny’ Megan Nolan, author of ACTS OF DESPERATION PRAISE FOR KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD: ‘Absorbs you utterly’ Sunday Times ‘One of the most genuinely suspenseful, alluring books I’ve ever read’ Brandon Taylor ‘Addictive’ Daily Telegraph ‘Brilliant storytelling . . . Epic’ Independent 'Strikingly humane, unsettling, and wholly unique' Ferdia Lennon ‘As accessible and creepy as anything by Stephen King and as addictive as your favourite TV drama’ Spectator 'One of my literary heroes' Torrey Peters ‘Knausgaard is among the finest writers alive’ New York Times

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Los Angeles Times • A kaleidoscopic novel about ordinary lives on the cusp of irrevocable change, from bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard. “The people in The Third Realm are as vivid and convincing as Knausgaard’s autobiographical persona . . . Enthralling . . . you can’t stop reading.” —Lev Grossman, The Atlantic “One of the most genuinely suspenseful, alluring books I’ve ever read. Novel by novel, Knausgaard is replenishing some feral charge to the world.” —Brandon Taylor, The Washington Post For several days, a strange and bright new star in the sky above Norway has sown an unyielding sense of foreboding, of agitation, and of fear. Tove, a painter on holiday with her family, has spiraled into a psychosis that stirs her into a flurry of unbridled creativity. Geir, a policeman who has been investigating a grisly triple murder, comes to a sinister revelation he must keep to himself. Nineteen-year-old Line falls in love with the lead singer of a metal band and is lured into a secret and frightening world. But most bewildering, and disquieting, is the discovery made by Syvert, an undertaker: since the star has appeared, no one has died. In The Third Realm, Karl Ove Knausgaard returns to the spellbinding world of The Morning Star and The Wolves of Eternity, as a cast of new and familiar characters continue to reckon with the meaning of this star. What is haunting them, and why? As supernatural forces collide with the mundanities of the everyday, and the threshold between life and death becomes diffuse, people are forced to live their lives as before while the world around them slowly changes in inexplicable ways. Piercing through human existence into the bestial and phantasmagorical, Knausgaard flings open the gates to our most distressing neuroses and forces us to ask: What happens if the dark forces in the world are set free?

An NPR Best Book of 2023 • “Knausgaard is back, with a compulsively readable new novel.” —The Washington Post “The Wolves of Eternity, like some 19th-century Russian novel, wrestles with the great contraries: the materialist view and the religious, the world as cosmic accident versus embodiment of some radiant intention. Is this world shot through with meaning or not? Has there ever been a better time to ask?” —The New York Times Book Review From the internationally bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard, a sprawling and deeply human novel that questions the responsibilities we have toward one another and ourselves—and the limits of what we can understand about life itself. In 1986, twenty-year-old Syvert Løyning returns from the military to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One evening, his dead father comes to him in a dream. Realizing that he doesn’t really know who his father was, Syvert begins to investigate his life and finds clues pointing to the Soviet Union. What he learns changes his past and undermines the entire notion of who he is. But when his mother becomes ill, and he must care for his little brother, Joar, on his own, he no longer has time or space for lofty speculations. In present-day Russia, Alevtina Kotov, a biologist working at Moscow University, is traveling with her young son to the home of her stepfather, to celebrate his eightieth birthday. As a student, Alevtina was bright, curious and ambitious, asking the big questions about life and human consciousness. But as she approaches middle-age, most of that drive has gone, and she finds herself in a place she doesn’t want to be, without really understanding how she got there. Her stepfather, a musician, raised her as his own daughter, and she was never interested in learning about her biological father; when she finally starts looking into him, she learns that he died many years ago and left two sons, Joar and Syvert. Years later, when Syvert and Alevtina meet in Moscow, two very different approaches to life emerge. And as a bright star appears in the sky, it illuminates the wonder of human existence and the mysteries that exist beyond our own worldview. Set against the political and cultural backdrop of both the 1980s and the present day, The Wolves of Eternity is an expansive and affecting book about relations—to one another, to nature, to the dead.

The grand finale of Karl Ove Knausgaard's masterful and intensely-personal series about the four seasons, illustrated with paintings by the great German artist Anselm Kiefer. The conclusion to one of the most extraordinary and original literary projects in recent years, Summer once again intersperses short vividly descriptive essays with emotionally-raw diary entries addressed directly to Knausgaard's newborn daughter, weaving them into a moving conclusion. He mines with new depth his difficult memories of his childhood and fraught relationship with his own father, documenting his family’s life in rural Sweden. The pains of family and parenthood come alive with uncommon feeling. “Engrossing. . . . Knausgaard’s prose evokes universal themes from intimate specifics.” —Publisher's Weekly, starred review

Karl Ove Knausgaard

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