My Struggle: Book 1

It has already been anointed a Proustian masterpiece and is the rare work of dazzling literary originality that is intensely, irresistibly readable. Unafraid of the big issues—death, love, art, fear—and yet committed to the intimate details of life as it is lived, My Struggle is an essential work of contemporary literature.

"Knausgaard is among the finest writers alive." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"Knausgaard is a master . . . guiding us inexorably and irresistibly towards the next installment." — Financial Times

"It would not be an exaggeration to say that Karl Ove Knausgaard's six-volume memoir My Struggle . . . has catapulted the Norwegian writer into the rarefied company of such authors as James Joyce, Marcel Proust and Henry Miller. These writers burst forth with a new consciousness and in so doing became the voice of their generation. Years hence we will be talking about Knausgaard's incredibly detailed memoir cycle doing the same for the late 20th century." — The Providence Journal

"It's unbelievable. I just read 200 pages of it and I need the next volume like crack." —Zadie Smith, via Twitter

"What makes his book extraordinary is not what happens, which couldn't be more familiar or ordinary. It's that Knausgaard aims to capture the unending blizzard of feelings, objects, people and situations that make up a life. At the same time, like Proust—the inevitable point of comparison—he hopes to shape all this stuff into a form that gives his experience a larger meaning." —NPR