Karl Ove Knausgård

Karl Ove Knausgård (; born 6 December 1968) is a Norwegian author. He became known worldwide for a series of six autobiographical novels titled My Struggle (Min Kamp). The Wall Street Journal has described him as "one of the 21st century's greatest literary sensations". and on an oil platform, while trying to become a writer. He eventually published his first novel in 1998.

Literary career Debut and follow-up Knausgård made his publishing debut in 1998 with the novel Out of the World, for which he was awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature. This was the first time in the award's history that a debut novel had won.

His second novel, A Time for Everything (2004), partly retells certain parts of the Bible as well as the history of angels on earth. The book won a number of awards and was nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize. It was also nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award. It was called a "strange, uneven, and marvellous book" by The New York Review of Books.

The Min Kamp books

While Knausgård's two first books were well received, it was the six-volume Min Kamp (My Struggle) series of autobiographical novels that made Knausgård a household name in Norway. Published from 2009 to 2011 and totalling over 3,500 pages, the books were hugely successful and also caused much controversy. The controversy was caused partly because the Norwegian title of the book, Min Kamp, is the same as the Norwegian title of Hitler's Mein Kampf, and partly because some have suggested Knausgård goes too far in exposing the private lives of his friends and family—including his father, ex-wife, uncle, and grandmother. The books have nevertheless received almost universally favourable reviews, at least the first two volumes. In a country of five million people, the Min Kamp series has sold over 450,000 copies.

The Min Kamp series is translated into numerous languages. The books were published to great critical acclaim in Denmark, Sweden,

In a long and largely positive review of the first Min Kamp books, James Wood of The New Yorker wrote that "There is something ceaselessly compelling about Knausgård's book: even when I was bored, I was interested."

2013–2019: Essays and the Seasons Quartet

Knausgård served as a consultant to the new Norwegian translation of the Bible. In 2013, he published a collection of essays, Sjelens Amerika: tekster 1996–2013 (""), and in 2013 he adapted his novel Out of the World into a screenplay.

Between 2015 and 2016, Knausgård published his Seasons Quartet, a series of four books titled Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer, that like the My Struggle-series are also autobiographical in nature, consisting of diary excerpts, letters, and other personal materials.

Knausgård has written works devoted to the visual arts. He co-authored Anselm Kiefer: Transition from Cool to Warm, a book in 2018 on the German artist Anselm Kiefer with James Lawrence. In 2019, Knausgård published a monograph on the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, and his interview about Munch also appeared as a highlight of the British Museum's 2019 exhibition catalogue, Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, by curator Giulia Bartrum.

In October 2019 Knausgård became the sixth writer chosen to contribute to the Future Library project. His essay collection In the Land of the Cyclops was published in Norwegian in 2018 and in English in January 2021.

2020–2025: Novel series In September 2020 Knausgård's novel Morgenstjernen ("The Morning Star"), a story about a number of peoples' everyday life in southern Norway while a mysteriously bright star appears in the sky, was published to critical acclaim in Norway. Danish and Swedish translations were published a few months later to great critical acclaim. It was sold in advance to fifteen countries.

In 2021, Ulvene fra evighetens skog (English translation The Wolves of Eternity, 2023), a sequel to Morgenstjernen mainly set in the 1980s that portrays two estranged half-siblings in Norway and the Soviet Union, was published in Norway. The longest novel in the series and dealing with various philosophical questions, it prompted critical comparison to a 19th-century Russian novel. A third book in the series titled Det tredje riket (English translation The Third Realm, 2024) was published in 2022, followed by Nattskolen (English translation The School of Night, 2026), in 2023 and Arendal in 2024. The sixth novel Jeg var lenge død, that outright deals with the supernatural implied in the previous novels, was published in Norwegian on 31 October 2025. In a radio interview published the same day, Knausgård revealed that he is writing a seventh book, which will be the final book in the series.

Critical reception Following the publication of Min Kamp, Knausgård has been described as "one of the 21st century's greatest literary sensations" by the Wall Street Journal. Some consider him the greatest Norwegian writer since playwright Henrik Ibsen. His deliberately prolix and minutely detailed style drew comparison to that of French novelist Marcel Proust and his seven-volume novel In Search of Lost Time.

Knausgård's 2020 novel The Morning Star was a critical success in Scandinavia.

Editing and publishing career Between 1999 and 2002 Knausgård was co-editor of Vagant, a Norwegian literary magazine founded in 1988. In 2010, he founded a small publishing house, Pelikanen (the Pelican), with his brother Yngve Knausgård and Asbjørn Jensen.

Personal life Knausgård is currently married to his third wife, Michal Knausgård (née Shavit). She is the publishing director of Fern Press in London, and previously worked as editorial director of Harvill Secker, where she edited and published Knausgård's novels. Shavit and Knausgård have one child, and live together in London, along with their children from prior marriages.

Knausgård lived in Österlen, Sweden, with his second wife, the writer Linda Boström Knausgård, and their four children until November 2016 when he and his wife separated. He now divides his time between London and Sweden.

In a radio interview with his estranged first wife, Tonje Aursland, who plays a part in several of the Min Kamp books, Knausgård admitted that he sometimes feels that he has made a "Faustian bargain"—that he has achieved huge success by sacrificing his relationships with friends and members of his family. In October 2010, Aursland presented her perspective on involuntarily becoming a subject of her ex-husband's autobiography in a radio documentary broadcast on NRK. Knausgård's uncle, who is represented as Gunnar in the Min Kamp books, has been highly critical of the whole project in the Norwegian press.