Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Book Five)

After reading the fourth book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-book autobiographical novel, I said that I had come to grasp his design; now, five books in, I feel as if I know the man himself. That’s not so surprising, given […]

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Book Four)

In a public conversation between Zadie Smith and Karl Ove Knausgaard, part of the Lannan Literary Series, Knausgaard relates how his editor’s description of his first novel as a “monument to male shame” took him utterly by surprise. “I wasn’t aware that […]

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Book Three)

In Kafka’s famous letter to his father, published after Kafka’s death and against his wishes, one line in particular perfectly encapsulates the essential qualities of an abusive father-son relationship: “For me you took on the enigmatic quality that all tyrants […]

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Book Two)

More than two years have passed since I read Book One of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume memoir My Struggle, and now, having just finished Book Two, subtitled “A Man In Love,” I don’t know why I allowed such a wide […]

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Book One)

It takes something approaching egomania to write a six-volume, 3500 page memoir when you’re barely 40 years old, and a rebellious indifference to propriety to borrow your title from one of history’s biggest egomaniacs, but the self-portrait emerging from Karl […]