A Death in the Family

Paperback, 441 pages

Published: 2009

Edition: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2013)

The Guardian's Best Books Since 2000

Original Title : Min Kamp #1. My Struggle Book One

Later retitled as "A Death in the Family"

Translated from the Norwegian by: Don Bartlett (2012)

"My Struggle" introduces American readers to the audacious, addictive, and profoundly surprising international literary sensation that is the provocative and brilliant six-volume autobiographical novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard.

Almost ten years have passed since Karl Ove’s father drank himself to death. Vulnerable and assailed by doubts, he is now embarking on a new novel. With an uncanny eye for detail, Knausgaard breaks down his own life story into its elementary particles, reliving memories, reopening wounds, and examining with candor the turbulence and the epiphanies that emerge from his own experience of fatherhood, the fallout in the wake of his father’s death, and his visceral connection to music, art, and literature. Negotiating intimacy, love, and fear lie at the heart of his movements and mind as he moves from self- deprecation to self-absorption, from craving solitude to exposing an insatiable need for love and admiration, from alienation to harmony. Karl Ove’s dilemmas strike nerves that give us raw glimpses of our particular moment in history as we witness what happens to the sensitive and churning mind of a young man trying – as if his very life depended on it – to find his place in the disjointed world around him. This Proustian masterpiece opens a window into one of the most original minds writing today.

Shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award.

'It's unbelievable... It's completely blown my mind' Zadie Smith