My Struggle: Book 4 finds an eighteen-year-old Karl Ove Knausgaard in a tiny fishing village in northern Norway, where he has been hired as a schoolteacher and is living on his own for the first time. When the ferocious winter takes hold, Karl Ove--in the company of the Håfjord locals, a warm and earthy group who have spent their lives working, drinking, and joking together in close quarters--confronts private demons, reels from humiliations, and is elated by small victories. We are immersed, along with Karl Ove, in this world--sometimes claustrophobic, sometimes serenely beautiful--where memories and physical obsessions burn throughout the endless Arctic winter. In Book 4, Karl Ove must weigh the realities of his new life as a writer against everything he had believed it would be.
Every time I pick up K.O. Knausgard's book I know it will be good and strong. This part is no exception.
How interestingly he describes his life! And hardships and happy moments. I will repeat for the nth time that I seem to be reading a novel instead of an autobiography!
And one of the topics in the book is one from my immediate environment ... maybe it’s not fun to read about it, but at least I can keep an eye on why some people behave this way and what they get out of it.
Whoever wants a serious reading, I suggest you really grab any K.O. Knausgard book, or the whole one. I don't think you will be disappointed.
Publishing house: Baltos Lankos
Literary Awards: Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize Nominee for Don Bartlett (2016)