my struggle karl ove knausgaard goodreads

Knausgaard’s estranged, alcoholic father: a cold, judgmental man who left his family when Karl Ove was in his teens. Book 1, “A Death in the Family,” assembles the fallout of the death of Mr. Stein said, “even if it was the man he was a day ago.”Ī theme emerges in each volume. “He’s interested in imagining his way into the mind of the child he was or the man he was,” Mr. Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, defended such digressions. The novel contains every aspect of this quest, including long digressions that describe trips to the gas station, a hair salon or a tedious party for toddlers. What does that life look like? “My Struggle” reveals a well-meaning, self-doubting man in his early 40s, trying to make sense of the emotional wounds of his childhood, to build a meaningful personal life and to fulfill his creative ambitions. “But reading him, you feel you’re absorbing the complete portrait of an entire life.” Knausgaard at the New York Public Library. Most people are just as surprised as I was that they are captivated.” “I thought it was going to be some kind of dour Scandinavian novel,” he said. Eugenides, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Middlesex” and “The Virgin Suicides,” said last week that he understood why some readers approach “My Struggle” with trepidation. (“My Struggle,” or “Min Kamp” in Norwegian, is “Mein Kampf” in German - the title of Hitler’s notorious manifesto.)

Knausgaard or if you have heard of him, you may have put off tackling the books, daunted by their Proustian bulk and uncertain of what that menacing title holds in store. If you are an author, editor or critic, chances are you are lining up for “Boyhood.” If you are a lay reader, you may not have heard of Mr. Knausgaard’s saga about his life as a shame-scourged son, husband, father and writer, comes out in the United States next week from Archipelago Books, translated by Don Bartlett (who has undertaken the entire series and has 2,201 pages of Norwegian to go). “Sometimes a writer appears who just demands that you line up for the next book.” “I read them compulsively I can’t stop,” Jonathan Lethem said.

Many of his peers react with similar awe. Knausgaard does is something “nobody’s done before.” The novelist Jeffrey Eugenides, calling these two elements “auto-fiction” and “rumination,” said that blending them in the way Mr. Direct and unguarded in tone, the books combine a micro-focus on the granular detail of daily life (child care, groceries, quarrels with friends) with earnest meditations on art, death, music and ambition. Karl Ove Knausgaard, a handsome, rangy, brooding Norwegian author (and father of four young children) has held much of the literary establishment in thrall ever since his 3,600-page, six-part autobiographical novel, “My Struggle,” started appearing in English in 2012.

My struggle karl ove knausgaard goodreads