Curious about your rankings

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

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?

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

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?

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/

Can someone in publishing or who knows a lot about publishing please explain why the hell the publisher has changed the beautiful Morning Star series design style to something different for Book 4?

This kind of thing drives me crazy - it completely breaks the vibe of my Knausgaard bookshelf. :)

Like the title says. Picked up the quartet at a library book sale knowing nothing about it except that the series was addressed to his newborn daughter. So I didn't look at publication dates, didn't do any research, I just thought, "Oh, babies. Start with Spring."

I'm more than halfway through now, I'm loving it, but now that I know I should have started with Autumn, what's the best course? Stop reading Spring, start Autumn -- go through Spring, then Summer, then double back?

What do the experts say?

Honestly could’ve been something I read somewhere else but I think it was in My Struggle or an interview with Knausgaard or something. It was something along the lines of “The height of intellectualism is calling something bad.” or something along those lines. Anyone know where this comes from?

I read the My Struggle series as the translations came out in the 2010s so not even close to remembering which book this is in, but this scene stuck with me and i'd like to track down the novel described here if it exists in an english translation.

if memory serves correctly, the scene (in My Struggle) describes young-ish karl (maybe while he's at the writing program in bergen?) buying a new novel by a norwegian author he admires. he reads the opening and is immediately impressed / swept away. the first page / paragraph is quoted in its entirety.

it is v modern prose that we come to realize is describing a girl dancing in a nightclub, but the writing is so dreamlike that it takes a few sentences to understand where we are and what's happening. it's highly visual and evocative and captures desire among young people very vividly. it's easy to sense a connection between this text and karl's own writing.

anyone got any ideas? good chance i'm remembering it wrong. but this image stuck with me and years later i realize i want to read this book.

thank you!

Other covers have been splendid too.