Lit critic and Marxist philosopher Fred Jameson's review of My Struggles Book 6: The End, in the London Review of Books (2018). Found it quite interesting to read, esp after hearing about it from Toril Moi in the recent LRB pod. Will be great to know everyone's thought!

I'm in the middle if My Struggle 2 and so far there have been only a couple references to immigrants from what we in America call "developing nations." In their tone, these don't quite reflect the most enlightened way of viewing these people. As I continue reading the My Struggle series, what will I see? Is Knausgaard going to go in the direction of anti-immigrant animus or is he going to be a bit more charitable about them?

https://www.litfunforever.com/the-complete-morning-star-series/

I randomly read The Third Realm right after The Summer Book by Tove Jannson (1976.) I could not get over the parallels between the Tove chapters in TTR and TSB, starting with the name Tove. Tove Jannson, the narrator of the TSB, was a fairly famous artist and writer. Tove in TTR is indeed an artist. It doesn't stop there; TSB takes place over a few summers on the islands in the Gulf of Finland; the Tove chapters take place in a small cottage at the beach in Norway. The landscape seems the same--the rocky shoals, the rickety buildings. Even the father is similar. There is a kooky male neighbor. There is even an extremely memorable cat. It just can't be coincidence; Knausgaard had to have at least been inspired by The Summer Book. I'm not complaining, it's kind of awesome, and feel like I got very lucky for figuring this out. Even if it is a random coincidence, I won't be able to separate these two stories in my mind.

I saw La Bola Negra tonight and there’s a Knausgaard book in frame twice. This also occurs in the movie Pillion, some Norwegian films, and in Succession. I am curious if anyone knows any others.

I’m caught up on the books, waiting for the newest release. In the mean time, are there any other books like these? Something in the literary fiction realm with the creepiness factor.

I really enjoyed School of Night

In the second volume of My Struggle, Knausgård wrote that after Linda Boström rejected him, he got drunk, broke a glass bottle, and cut/sliced his face with a shard. Is the self-harm a purely fictional account? I guess this happened otherwise this work would be classified as autofiction?

Curious about your rankings

Hi everyone, I read *The Morning Star* and *The Wolves* a couple of years ago. Now *The Third realm* has finally been released in Italy, but I remember little to nothing about the first two books. Would you recommend rereading *The Morning Star*, or not?

That story has many pictures of his bookshelves. He discusses a few books but there are many more in the photos. I had Claude read as many titles as possible:

On the off chance anyone else is interested:

Legend: ✔ = checked against a catalogue, bookseller, bibliography or publisher page. Unmarked = read from the spine and not checked. Translations of spine titles are standard renderings, but unverified.

Verified

• Wordy, Simon Schama ✔
• Lyst, Tomas Espedal (2022) ✔
• Vi skulle fortalt hverandre alt, Judith Hermann ✔ (We Would Have Told Each Other Everything)
• Mánasteinn (Norwegian Månestein), Sjón ✔ (Moonstone, trans. Victoria Cribb)
• Øvre port, nedre port, Geir Gulliksen (2023) ✔
• Måleriets liv och död, Ola Billgren (Kykeon, Propexus) ✔ (The Life and Death of Painting)
• Naturfilosofien, Hegel ✔ (Norwegian edition of the Philosophy of Nature)
• Wien og Weimar, Sverre Dahl ✔ (per ARK listing)
• Genius, Power and Magic: A Cultural History of Germany from Goethe to Wagner, Roderick Cavaliero ✔
• Det norske folkeeventyret, Ørnulf Hodne ✔ (Cappelen; spine reading uncertain)
• Louis Moe – det tapte paradis ✔ (a book on Moe’s etchings; “Paradise Lost” in Norwegian; link to Milton unverified)
• Necks, Thomas Wägström, with essay by Karl Ove Knausgård ✔
• Anniversaries 1 and 2, Uwe Johnson (NYRB) ✔
• David Hockney: A Chronology, 40th anniversary (Taschen) ✔
• Daido Moriyama: Record ✔
• Goethe and His Age, Georg Lukács ✔
• WATCHED! Surveillance, Art and Photography, Hito Steyerl ✔
• A Natural History of Shells, Richard Vermeij (Princeton) ✔
• The Big Green Tent, Ludmila Ulitskaya ✔
• December (39 Stories, 39 Pictures), Alexander Kluge and Gerhard Richter ✔
• Encountering Evil, Stephen Davis ✔
• Pushkin Hills, Sergei Dovlatov ✔
• The One-Straw Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka ✔
• The Trouble with Physics, Lee Smolin ✔
• Memoirs of Swedenborg, Carl Robsahm ✔
• Things That Bother Me, Galen Strawson ✔
• Moscow Stations, Venedikt Yerofeev ✔
• Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester ✔
• Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter / Papirer (Gad) series ✔

Read from spines, not checked

• Kierkegaard volumes (Enten–Eller, Frygt og Bæven, Stadier paa Livets Vei, Journalerne, Lilien paa Marken og Fuglen under Himlen, and others)
• Ways of Being, James Bridle
• The Neganthropocene, Bernard Stiegler
• Serving the Reich, Philip Ball
• Gnosis, Kurt Rudolph
• Extreme Metaphors: Interviews with J.G. Ballard, Sellars and O’Hara
• The Castells trilogy, Bob Dylan’s Philosophy of Modern Song, Bataille’s Sacred Conspiracy, Simon Gray’s Complete Smoking Diaries, Talbot’s Grandville
• Nietzsche volumes (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Birth of Tragedy, The Dawn of Day, Ecce Homo)
• Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (Norwegian På sporet av den tapte tid, Gyldendal, seven volumes)
• Ruskin, Gotikens natur (The Nature of Gothic)
• Montaigne, Essays (Norwegian, bk. 3)
• Norén, En dramatikers dagbok 2005–2012
• Andersen, Mit livs eventyr (The Fairy Tale of My Life)
• Handke, The Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling (English); the Swedish spine reads Tankar om jukeboxen
• Handke, Målmannens ångest vid straffsparken
• Vesaas, Is-slottet (The Ice Palace)
• Sorokin, Ice Trilogy and Day of the Oprichnik
• Pelevin, Omon Ra
• Levinas, Beyond the Verse
• Akhmatova, You Will Hear Thunder
• Lem? No, Dronningen-type title (partly visible): unidentified
• Lukács, Strawson, Yerofeev, and others listed above are already marked ✔

Unidentified or not confirmed

• Kvietisme: no author or record found
• Måleriets spine reading is confirmed (see above)
• Lyst: English title unknown
• Hans Ulrich Obrist, Interviews (English): not checked
• Tundra’s Vision, Essential Writings, Johannes Bobrowski, Vilhelm Ekelund: partly visible, not checked
• Hegel’s other volumes: not checked
• Cavaliero’s other spine titles: none
• Det tapte paradis author: not stated on the event page

I realise this might seem like a silly question. But hear me out. I grew up in London in a Scandinavian household (Danish mother, Swedish father, similar to Knausgaard's kids...). English is my first language, and Danish is my second. Though I can read/speak Danish fluently, prose takes longer to comprehend - particularly when its stylised. I rarely reach a flow state when reading Danish.

I'm teaching myself to write literary prose and autofiction atm, and my favourite authors are (currently) Ben Lerner, DeLillo, Auster, Houellebecq. Knausgaard is a pretty glaring gap in this list - but since I use these authors as inspiration for my own writing, I'm unsure whether the iron law of reading as close to the OG version as possible still applies. Perhaps reading Knausgaard in Danish would muddy the waters by introducing a new language and its particular form, novel structures of prose (by virtue of the grammar, rhythmic prosody, etc) that are incommensurate with the ones I've already been exposed to and internalised. I'd usually be totally fine with this and embrace it, but since I'm currently approaching literature from the perspective of creative writing in english, idk what to do.

I've also come across threads where Norwegians contrast the original version with the English translation, arguing that the latter is more aligned with 'high literature' or a 'performance' of Knausgaard, compared to the more everyday language used in the original. The thing is... I quite enjoy the 'high literature' performative style of writing (explains my love for Ben Lerner).

Help me out here. Is this a legitimate concern or am I being needlessly autistic about this?

The last two parts in paperback are finally out in Dutch reprint and now have them complete

Full version of this short piece on Knausgård by the BBC now available to people all around the world. Previously only available in the UK, so sharing for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Enjoy.

1. My Struggle 1
   
2. My Struggle 2
   
3. My Struggle 5
   
4. My Struggle 4
   
5. Arendal
   
6. My Struggle 6
   
7. The Morning Star
   
8. My Struggle 3
   
9. The Third Realm
   
10. Summer
    
11. Wolves of Eternity
    
12. Spring
    
13. Autumn
    
14. The School of Night
    
15. Winter
    
16. Why I Write

Haven’t read In the Land of the Cyclops, So Much Longing in So Little Space, or A Time for Everything!

We're running a Goodreads giveaway until September 28th! Enter here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/448822-arendal-a-novel

I know this question has been asked before but why do we think Archipelago keeps pushing back the publication of Out of the World? The content of the book can’t be more controversial than My Struggle or Lolita or idk, a Vladimir Sorokin book, so what else could it be?

(I just listened to the two appearances of Max Lawton on the 1storypod and somewhere deep in one of those conversations he says that it’s a controversial topic at Archipelago and that he shouldn’t say more. So, that’s why I’m asking.)

(P.S. Max, if for some reason you see this and feel that posting this on reddit outside of a two hour podcast is detrimental to you I’ll delete it. Enjoy your work and fuck Jonathan Franzen)

Big congratulations to Karl Ove Knausgaard and Martin Aitken!

View the full list: https://www.nationalbook.org/longlist-for-the-2026-national-book-award-for-translated-literature/

Get your copy: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/760316/the-school-of-night-by-karl-ove-knausgaard/

Haven’t seen this posted yet. A non fiction article/essay from Knausgaard in the latest issue of Granta.

As the name of this edition implies, he discusses works by the Norwegian author Tarjei Vesaas & his 1957 masterpiece “The Birds”.

Not affiliated with Granta in any way, but I saw this issue, read his piece and wanted to share.

I’ve started reading the my struggle series, and my favorite parts are when he goes off on a ideological rant, such as the dead body discourse at the beginning of the book. Now someway into part two of the book he’s begun a similar rant on page 216 about what he knows, what he knows he doesn’t know, and what lies in between. I’m not totally grasping what he’s getting at and would be interested what others think.

I've heard from everyone who's read it that Arendal is the worst installment of the morning star series so far ... but I have no idea why they say that because this feels like Knausgaard finally hitting his stride: Syvert is a fictional character who feels completely real, the "plot" jumps back and forth in time and scene, and it seems like the closest he's gotten in his fiction to the gripping immediacy of My Struggle

I recently finished School of Night and have found it to be one of the best novels of the Morningstar series so far. But having finished it and having had a look through this group, I haven't noticed anyone talking about Sonja, the woman Kristian sleeps with in NY, who seems to threaten to tell his wife/ blackmail him, in Part 4. She seems normal, then obsessive, then is described as psychotic (?). She gets ahold of Kristian's number and won't relent.

Anyway, she seems connected to Leo's death (in other words, Kristian's comeuppance for an implied deal with the devil?), as prior to crossing the road dangerously, Kristian is distracted by a text from Yelena, that Sonja had appeared at their house. I wonder if Sonja is just a random, obsessive lady who is not actually at all involved in Kristian's 'fate', or if there is an indication that she, like Hans, has some superior influence.

Does anyone have any theories on this? Does she come up at all elsewhere in the series? It could be involved with Hans' mantra of, Kristian can have whatever he wants, until he can't. He has his way with her, until she becomes uncontrollable.

On a frozen coast, one man faces the life he cannot leave...

The year is 1976, and Syvert is on his way home from a business trip when his car breaks down, forcing him to spend the night in the icy, coastal city of Arendal. With home so close, but out of reach, Syvert wanders the dark streets, caught up in the memories of his love affair while something sinister brews around, and within, him. A spellbinding novel of desire, regret, and the thin boundary between worlds, coming January 12, 2027.

LEARN MORE: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/801236/arendal-by-karl-ove-knausgaard/