That’s not to say that Knausgaard has created nine versions of himself, for Kathrine and an embittered culture journalist called Jostein are as different as two people could be. Jostein finds himself suddenly locked in another reality, a limbo land of the dead that might be a dreamworld or the underworldĪnd regardless of whether they are male or female, old or young, highly educated or not, they all also share their creator’s distinctive ways of describing nature and his habit of lengthy digressions about incidental events. Almost everyone seems to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes with the same dedication to filling humdrum moments as the author’s self-depiction demonstrated in My Struggle. If you can imagine HP Lovecraft having studied German romanticism, throw in some Emmanuel Carrère-style theological musings, some Jo Nesbø-ish gore, and set it all in the forested backdrop of Norway, then that might give something of the unusual flavour of this unclassifiable book.īut perhaps it’s the more familiar aspects of Knausgaard’s writing that are most jarring, because the novel is suffused with his motifs and preoccupations. It’s not exactly genre writing, but certainly prose that is keenly aware of the value of suspense and surprise. There are other equally uncanny or inexplicable occurrences, often rendered in sequences of grippingly crafted storytelling. Or there’s Solveig, a nurse who assists in an operation to remove the vital organs of a dead politician who, when the transplant surgeon begins to open him up, comes mysteriously to life.

For example, Kathrine, a priest, carries out a funeral service for a man who died more than a week before but whom she recognises as the guy who had pestered her the previous day.

The morning star by karl ove knausgaard