My Struggle – serie

One of the Guardian's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, an addictive and searingly honest novel about childhood, family and grief.Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about his life with painful honesty. He writes about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant and unpredictable father, and his bewilderment and grief on his father's death.When Karl Ove becomes a father himself, he must balance the demands of caring for a young family with his determination to write great literature. Knausgaard has created a universal story of the struggles, great and small, that we all face in our lives. A profound and mesmerizing work, written as if the author's very life were at stake.'A masterpiece... Its depiction of a family's disintegration is one of the most powerful pieces of writing I've read in years' Observer

An electrifying story about love and new life from the international phenomenon, Karl Ove Knausgaard.This is a book about leaving your wife and everything you know.It is about fresh starts, about love, about friendship. It is also about the earth-shattering experience of becoming a father, the mundane struggles of family life, ridiculously unsuccessful holidays, humiliating antenatal music classes, fights with quarrelsome neighbours, the emotional strains of childrens' birthday parties and pushing a pram around Stockholm when all you really want to do is write.This is a book about one man's life but, somehow, about everyone else's too.'Compelling, rewarding...breathtaking' Observer

An irresistible story of childhood adventure from the international phenomenon, Karl Ove Knausgaard.Childhood is exhilarating and terrifying. For the young Karl Ove, new houses, classes and friends are met with manic excitement and creeping dread. Adults occupy godlike positions of power, benevolent in the case of his doting mother, tyrannical in the case of his cruel father.In the now infamously direct style of the My Struggle cycle, Knausgaard describes a time in which victories and defeats are felt keenly and every attempt at self-definition is frustrated. This is a book about family, memory and how we never become quite what we set out to be.'Knausgaard finds the sublime in the everyday... Boyhood Island reverberates with the joys and anxieties of early youth, and Knausgaard brilliantly recreates their exaggerated feel'Times Literary Supplement

A beautiful, funny, vital novel of teenage years and teenage mistakes from the international phenomenon, Karl Ove Knausgaard.Fresh out of high school, Karl Ove moves to a remote fishing village to work as a teacher. He has no interest in the job itself - or in any other job for that matter, his sole aim is to save money and start writing.All goes well to begin with but as the nights grow longer, his life takes a darker turn. Drinking causes him blackouts, his repeated attempts at losing his virginity end in humiliation, and to his own great distress he develops romantic feelings towards one of his 13-year-old students. And all the while the shadow of his father looms large.'Beautifully human... Being drawn into Knausgaard's world is an ineluctable pleasure'The Times

An exhilarating story of ambition, joy and failure in early manhood from the international phenomenon, Karl Ove Knausgaard.As the youngest student to be admitted to Bergen's prestigious Writing Academy, Karl Ove arrives full of excitement and writerly aspirations. Soon though, he is stripped of his youthful illusions. His writing is revealed to be puerile and clichéd, and his social efforts are a dismal failure. He drowns his shame in drink and rock music.Then, little by little, things begin to change. He falls in love, gives up writing and the beginnings of an adult life take shape. That is, until his self-destructive binges and the irresistible lure of the writer's struggle pull him back.'Breathtaking... Knausgaard has a rare talent for making everyday life seem fascinating'The Times

From the international phenomenon Karl Ove Knausgaard, the extraordinary final volume of 'the most significant literary enterprise of our times' (Guardian).In this final novel in the My Struggle cycle, Karl Ove Knausgaard examines life, death, love and literature with unsparing rigour and begins to count the cost of his project.The End reflects on the fallout from the earlier books, with Knausgaard facing the pressures of literary acclaim and its often shattering repercussions. It is at once a meditation on writing and its relationship with reality, and an account of a writer's relationship with himself - from his ambitions to his doubts and frailties.'Epic... It creates a world that absorbs you utterly'Sunday Times'Compulsively addictive'Daily Telegraph'My Struggle has strong claim to be the great literary event of the twenty-first century'Guardian'A mesmerising, thought-provoking and genuinely important work of art'Spectator