From New York Times bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard comes a collection of ambitious, remarkably erudite essays on art, literature, culture, and philosophy.In the Land of the Cyclops is a collection of eighteen essays by Karl Ove Knausgaard on an array of visual artists and writers, and his own private life and thoughts. Paired with full-color images, Knausgaard discusses the work of artists such as Francesca Woodman, Cindy Sherman, Anselm Kiefer, and Sally Mann, to name a few. Writing on personal experiences that range from his encounters with the Northern Lights, the birth of his daughter, trips to the beach with his four children, to his career-spanning relationship with his editor, these essays beautifully capture Knausgaard's ability to mediate between the deeply personal and the philosophical, with his trademark searing honesty and his deep longing to authentically see, understand, and experience the world.

From the internationally bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard, a sprawling and deeply human novel that questions the responsibilities we have toward one another and ourselves—and the limits of what we can understand about life itselfIn 1986, twenty-year-old Syvert Løyning returns from the military to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One evening, his dead father comes to him in a dream. Realizing that he doesn’t really know who his father was, Syvert begins to investigate his life and finds clues pointing to the Soviet Union. What he learns changes his past and undermines the entire notion of who he is. But when his mother becomes ill, and he must care for his little brother, Joar, on his own, he no longer has time or space for lofty speculations.In present-day Russia, Alevtina Kotov, a biologist working at Moscow University, is traveling with her young son to the home of her stepfather, to celebrate his eightieth birthday. As a...

The second book in the Why I Write series provides generous insight into the creative process of the award-winning Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard"Why I Write" may prove to be the most difficult question Karl Ove Knausgaard has struggled to answer yet it is central to the project of one of the most influential writers working today. To write, for the Norwegian artist, is to resist easy thinking and preconceived notions that inhibit awareness of our lives. Knausgaard writes to "erode [his] own notions about the world. . . . It is one thing to know something, another to write about it." The key to enhanced living is the ability to hit upon something inadvertently, to regard it from a position of defenselessness and unknowing. A deeply personal meditation, Inadvertent is a cogent and accessible guide to the creative process of one of our most prolific and ingenious artists.

A major new work from the author of the renowned My Struggle series, MORNING STAR is an astonishing, ambitious, and rich novel about what we don't understand, and our attempts to make sense of our world nonethelessIt's a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in Sørlandet. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar, the journalist Jostein is out on the town, and his wife Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is. Is there a star burning itself out? Why then has no one seen it before? Or is it a brand new star? Slowly the interest in the news subsides, and life goes on, but not quite as before, for unusual phenomena begin to occur on the fringes of human existence. Over these...

Literary giant Karl Ove Knausgaard offers a brilliant and personal assessment of the famous expressionist painter, his Norwegian compatriot, Edvard MunchKarl Ove Knausgaard's renowned sui generis autobiographical works, both the My Struggle and Four Seasons series, have been celebrated for their passionate and original engagement with art and their insightful critical excursions. But never before in English has Knausgaard published a true work of nonfiction. With this daring sweeping study, in characteristic style, Knausgaard combines piercing artistic insight with freewheeling historical, biographical, and autobiographical digressions, bringing to life Munch's emotionally and psychologically intense work with extraordinary and fitting feeling and urgency. Munch has long been most famous for his iconic work The Scream, but a series of important and comprehensive exhibitions with major galleries in both London and New York have promoted...

The final installment in the long-awaited, internationally celebrated My Struggle series.The full scope and achievement of Knausgaard's monumental work is evident in this final installment of his My Struggle series. Grappling directly with the consequences of Knausgaard's transgressive blurring of public and private, Book 6 is a troubling and engrossing look into the mind of one of the most exciting artists of our time. Knausgaard includes a long essay on Hitler and Mein Kampf, particularly relevant (if not prescient) in our current global climate of ascending dictatorships.