My Struggle (4)

An autobiographical story of childhood and family from the international sensation and bestseller, Karl Ove Knausgaard. A family of four — mother, father and two boys — move to Sorland, to a new house on a new estate. It is the early 1970s, the children are small, the parents young and the future open. But at some point that future happens to them; at some point the future closes. The third book of the "My Struggle" cycle is set in a world where children and adults live parallel lives, ones that never meet. With insight and honesty, Karl Ove Knausgaard writes of a child''s growing self-awareness, of how events of the past impact on the present, and of the desire for other ways of living and other worlds within what we know.

Having left his first wife, Karl Ove Knausgaard moves to Stockholm, Sweden, where he leads a solitary existence. He strikes up a deep friendship with another exiled Norwegian, a Nietzschean intellectual and boxing fanatic named Geir. He also tracks down Linda, whom he met at a writers' workshop a few years earlier and who fascinated him deeply.

Book Two

"Intense and vital. . Where many contemporary writers would reflexively turn to irony, Knausgaard is intense and utterly honest, unafraid to voice universal anxieties. . The need for totality. . brings superb, lingering, celestial passages. . He wants us to inhabit he ordinariness of life, which is sometimes vivid, sometimes banal, and sometimes momentous, but all of it perforce ordinary because it happens in the course of a life, and happens, in different forms, to everyone. . The concluding sentences of the book are placid, plain, achieved. They have what Walter Benjamin called 'the epic side of truth, wisdom.'" — James Wood,

"Ruthless beauty." —

"This first installment of an epic quest should restore jaded readers to life." —

"Between Proust and the woods. Like granite; precise and forceful. More real than reality." — (Italy)

Winner of the 2009 Brage Prize, the 2010 Book of the Year Prize in "Morgenbladet," the 2010 P2 Listeners' Prize, and the 2004 Norwegian Critics' Prize and nominated for the 2010 Nordic Council Literary Prize.

"No one in his generation equals Knausgaard."-"Dagens Naeringsliv"

"A tremendous piece of literature."-"Politiken" (Denmark)

"To the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops. Sooner or later, one day or another, this thumping motion shuts down of its own accord. The changes of these first hours happen so slowly and are performed with such an inevitability that there is almost a touch of ritual about them, as if life capitulates according to set rules, a kind of gentleman's agreement."

Almost ten years have passed since Karl O. Knausgaard's father drank himself to death. He is now embarking on his third novel while haunted by self-doubt. Knausgaard breaks his own life story down to its elementary particles, often recreating memories in real time, blending recollections of images and conversation with profound questions in a remarkable way. Knausgaard probes into his past, dissecting struggles-great and small-with great candor and vitality. Articulating universal dilemmas, this Proustian masterpiece opens a window into one of the most original minds writing today.

Karl O. Knausgaard was born in Norway in 1968. His debut novel "Out of This World" won the Norwegian Critics' Prize and his "A Time for Everything" was nominated for the Nordic Council Prize.

The fifth installment in the epic six-volume 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.