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Karl Ove Knausgaard

Biography

Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s first novel, OUT OF THE WORLD, was the first-ever debut novel to win the Norwegian Critics’ Prize, and his second, A TIME FOR EVERYTHING, was widely acclaimed. The My Struggle cycle of novels has been heralded as a masterpiece wherever it has appeared.

Karl Ove Knausgaard

Books by Karl Ove Knausgaard

written by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Martin Aitken - Fiction

In 1986, 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. What he learns changes his past and undermines the entire notion of who he is. But when his mother becomes ill, 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 80th birthday. When she finally starts looking into her biological father, 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.

written by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Martin Aitken - Fiction

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 night shift 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.

by Karl Ove Knausgaard - Memoir, Nonfiction

AUTUMN begins with a letter Karl Ove Knausgaard writes to his unborn daughter, showing her what to expect of the world. He writes one short piece per day, describing the material and natural world with the precision and mesmerizing intensity that have become his trademark. He describes with acute sensitivity daily life with his wife and children in rural Sweden, drawing upon memories of his own childhood to give an inimitably tender perspective on the precious and unique bond between parent and child. The sun, wasps, jellyfish, eyes, lice --- the stuff of everyday life is the fodder for his art. Nothing is too small or too vast to escape his attention. Through close observation of the objects and phenomena around him, Knausgaard shows us how vast, unknowable and wondrous the world is.

by Karl Ove Knausgaard - Memoir, Nonfiction

The grand finale of Karl Ove Knausgaard's intensely personal series about the four seasons, SUMMER once again intersperses short vividly descriptive essays with emotionally raw diary entries addressed directly to Knausgaard's newborn daughter. Writing more expansively and, if it is possible, even more intimately and unguardedly than in the previous three volumes, 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 and reflecting on a characteristically eclectic array of subjects, he braids the various threads of the previous volumes into a moving conclusion.

by Karl Ove Knausgaard - Fiction

You don’t know what air is, and yet you breathe. You don’t know what sleep is, yet you sleep. You don’t know what night is, yet you lie in it. You don’t know what a heart is, yet your own heart beats steadily in your chest, day and night, day and night, day and night. So begins SPRING, the recommencement of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s fantastic and spellbinding literary project of assembling a personal encyclopedia of the world addressed directly to his newly born daughter. But here Knausgaard must also tell his daughter the story of what happened during the time when her mother was pregnant, and explain why he now has to attend appointments with child services. In order to keep his daughter safe, he must tell a terrible story, one that unfolds with acute psychological suspense over the course of a single day.

by Karl Ove Knausgaard - Memoir, Nonfiction

In WINTER, we rejoin Karl Ove Knausgaard as he waits for the birth of his daughter. In preparation for her arrival, he takes stock of the world, seeing it as if for the first time. He writes about the moon, water, messiness, owls, birthdays --- to name just a handful of his subjects. He fills these oh-so-familiar objects and ideas with new meaning, taking nothing for granted or as given. New life is on the horizon, but the earth is also in hibernation, waiting for the warmer weather to return, and so a contradictory melancholy inflects his gaze.

written by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Ingvild Burkey - Art, Art History, Biography, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction

In SO MUCH LONGING IN SO LITTLE SPACE, Karl Ove Knausgaard sets out to understand the enduring and awesome power of Edvard Munch’s work by training his gaze on the landscapes that inspired Munch and speaking firsthand with other contemporary artists, including Anselm Kiefer, for whom Munch’s legacy looms large. Bringing together art history, biography and memoir, Knausgaard tells a passionate, freewheeling and pensive story about not just one of history’s most significant painters, but the very meaning of choosing the artist’s life, as he himself has done.