Book 1

One of the Guardian's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, an addictive and searingly honest novel about childhood, family and grief.

* Karl Ove Knausgaard's dazzling new novel, The Morning Star, is available to pre-order now *

Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about his life with painful honesty. He writes about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant and unpredictable father, and his bewilderment and grief on his father's death.

When Karl Ove becomes a father himself, he must balance the demands of caring for a young family with his determination to write great literature. Knausgaard has created a universal story of the struggles, great and small, that we all face in our lives. A profound and mesmerizing work, written as if the author's very life were at stake.

'A masterpiece... Its depiction of a family's disintegration is one of the most powerful pieces of writing I've read in years' Observer


Book 1

Almost ten years have passed since Karl Ove Knausgaard'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 to 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. 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.

Intense and vital... The need for totality . . . brings superb, lingering, celestial passages . . .
The concluding sentences of the book [are] placid, plain, achieved. They have what Walter Benjamin called 'the epic side of truth, wisdom.' --James Wood, The New Yorker

"While not unconcerned with finding objective truth in the moments he recounts, Mr. Knausgaard aims first to simply record them, to try to shape the banal into something worth remembering. Beautifully rendered and, at times, painfully observant, his book does a superlative job of finding that "inner core of human existence." --The Wall Street Journal

Steadily absorbing, lit up by pages of startling insight and harrowing honesty, My Struggle introduces into world literature a singular character and immerses us in his fascinating Underground Man consciousness. -- Philip Lopate

Karl Ove--with his shyness, his passion, his honesty--can take on any subject and make it his own. -- Edmund White

I read both books [One and Two] hungrily and find myself already missing Knausgaard just a few days after turning A Man in Love's last page, searching the Web for inexpensive crash courses in Norwegian, mostly just wishing Volume Three were available in English now. --Jonathan Callahan, The Millions

Knausgaard's preternatural facility for description, the dreamy thickness of his prose, speaks not only to the sheer pleasure his fiction affords, but to the philosophical stakes of that pleasure. -- Mark Sussman, Los Angeles Review of Books

Book 1

Book 1

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Published 2 May 2013

Book 2


Book 2

A Man in Love

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Published 25 April 2013

An electrifying honest and autobiographical love story from the international sensation and bestseller, Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard leaves his wife and everything he knows in Oslo for a fresh start in Stockholm. There he strikes up a deep and competitive friendship with Geir and pursues Linda, a beautiful poet who captivated him years ago.

A Man in Love, the second book of six in the My Struggle cycle, sees Knausgaard write of tempestuous relationships, the trials of parenthood and an urge to create great art. His singular insight and exhilarating honesty must be read to be believed.

Another international sensation from the publishers of Summertime, 1Q84 and HHhH.


Book 3

Boyhood Island

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Published 20 March 2014

An irresistible story of childhood adventure from the international phenomenon, Karl Ove Knausgaard.

* Karl Ove Knausgaard's dazzling new novel, The Morning Star, is available to pre-order now *

Childhood is exhilarating and terrifying. For the young Karl Ove, new houses, classes and friends are met with manic excitement and creeping dread. Adults occupy godlike positions of power, benevolent in the case of his doting mother, tyrannical in the case of his cruel father.

In the now infamously direct style of the My Struggle cycle, Knausgaard describes a time in which victories and defeats are felt keenly and every attempt at self-definition is frustrated. This is a book about family, memory and how we never become quite what we set out to be.

'Knausgaard finds the sublime in the everyday... Boyhood Island reverberates with the joys and anxieties of early youth, and Knausgaard brilliantly recreates their exaggerated feel'
Times Literary Supplement


Book 3

Book Three

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Published 27 May 2014
A family of four--mother, father and two boys--move to the South Coast of Norway to a new house on a newly developed site. It is the early 1970s and the family's trajectory, upwardly mobile: the future seems limitless. In painstaking, sometimes self-lacerating detail, Knausgaard paints a world familiar to anyone who can recall the intensity and novelty of childhood experience, one in which children and adults lead parallel lives that never meet. Perhaps the most Proustian in the series, Book Three gives us Knausgaard's vivid, technicolor recollections of childhood, his emerging self-understanding, and the multilayered nature of time's passing, memory, and existence.

"Of course, I remember nothing from this time. It is completely impossible to identify with the infant my parents photographed; this is in fact so difficult it almost seems wrong to use the word 'I' when referring to it, lying in the baby bath, for instance, its skin unnaturally red, its arms and legs sprawling, and its face distorted in a scream no one remembers the reason for anymore ... Is that creature the same as the one sitting here in Malmö, writing this?"
--from Book Three of My Struggle

More praise for Book Three:

"A superbly told childhood story ... Knausgaard writes about everyday life as a child with a flow and continuity that all hangs together ... the text has a gravitational pull that draws the reader in only further." --Dag Og Tid (Norway)

"An aesthetic pleasure ... A patient, chiseled, and intense portrayal of a child's sensory experience. Book Three is a classic." --Klassekampen (Norway)

"Compelling reading ... Knausgaard has an equally good eye for small and large events." --Aftenposten (Norway)

"A gripping novel ... This childhood portrayal drifts off with a lightness and sensitivity that not many will associate with him ... There is no doubt that the series is worth following the author all the way." --Dagens Næringsliv (Norway)

"The man can write a novel about a solid, pretty traditional upbringing too ... A sensitive, sharp depiction of growing up in the 70's." --Adresseavisen (Norway)

Book 3


Book 4

Dancing in the Dark

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Published 5 March 2015

A beautiful, funny, vital novel of teenage years and teenage mistakes from the international phenomenon, Karl Ove Knausgaard.

* Karl Ove Knausgaard's dazzling new novel, The Morning Star, is available to pre-order now *

Fresh out of high school, Karl Ove moves to a remote fishing village to work as a teacher. He has no interest in the job itself - or in any other job for that matter, his sole aim is to save money and start writing.

All goes well to begin with but as the nights grow longer, his life takes a darker turn. Drinking causes him blackouts, his repeated attempts at losing his virginity end in humiliation, and to his own great distress he develops romantic feelings towards one of his 13-year-old students. And all the while the shadow of his father looms large.

'Beautifully human... Being drawn into Knausgaard's world is an ineluctable pleasure'
The Times


Book 4

Book Four

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Published 28 April 2015
At eighteen years, old Karl Ove moves to a tiny fisherman's village in the far north of the arctic circle to work as a school teacher. No interest in the job itself, his intention is to save up enough money to travel while finding the space and time to start his writing career. Initially everything looks fine. He writes his first few short stories, finds himself accepted by the hospitable locals, and receives flattering attention from several beautiful local girls. But as the darkness of the long arctic nights start to consume the landscape, Karl Ove's life takes a darker turn. His writing repeats itself, his drinking escalates to some disturbing blackouts, his attempts at losing his virginity end in humiliation and shame, and to his distress, he also develops romantic feelings towards one of his students. Along the way, there are flashbacks to his high school years and the roots of his current problems. Ever present is the long shadow cast by his father, whose own sharply increasing alcohol consumption serves as an ominous backdrop to the author's lifestlye.

Book 5

Some Rain Must Fall

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Published 3 March 2016

An exhilarating story of ambition, joy and failure in early manhood from the international phenomenon, Karl Ove Knausgaard.

* Karl Ove Knausgaard's dazzling new novel, The Morning Star, is available to pre-order now *

As the youngest student to be admitted to Bergen's prestigious Writing Academy, Karl Ove arrives full of excitement and writerly aspirations. Soon though, he is stripped of his youthful illusions. His writing is revealed to be puerile and clichéd, and his social efforts are a dismal failure. He drowns his shame in drink and rock music.

Then, little by little, things begin to change. He falls in love, gives up writing and the beginnings of an adult life take shape. That is, until his self-destructive binges and the irresistible lure of the writer's struggle pull him back.

'Breathtaking... Knausgaard has a rare talent for making everyday life seem fascinating'
The Times


Book 5

Book 5

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Published 18 April 2016

Book 5

Book Five

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Published 19 April 2016
The fifth book of Knausgaard's powerful My Struggle series is written with tremendous force and sincerity. As a nineteen-year-old, Karl Ove moves to Bergen and invests all of himself in his writing. But his efforts get the opposite effect - he wants it so much that he gets writer's block. At the same time, he sees his friends, one-by-one, publish their debuts. He suspects that he will never get anything published. Book Five is also a book about strong new friendships and a shattering love affair. Then one day Karl Ove reaches two crucial points in his life: his father dies, and shortly thereafter, he completes his first novel.

Book 6

The End

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Published 30 August 2018

From the international phenomenon Karl Ove Knausgaard, the extraordinary final volume of 'the most significant literary enterprise of our times' (Guardian).

* Karl Ove Knausgaard's dazzling new novel, The Morning Star, is available to pre-order now *

In this final novel in the My Struggle cycle, Karl Ove Knausgaard examines life, death, love and literature with unsparing rigour and begins to count the cost of his project.

The End reflects on the fallout from the earlier books, with Knausgaard facing the pressures of literary acclaim and its often shattering repercussions. It is at once a meditation on writing and its relationship with reality, and an account of a writer's relationship with himself - from his ambitions to his doubts and frailties.

'Epic... It creates a world that absorbs you utterly'
Sunday Times

'Compulsively addictive'
Daily Telegraph

'My Struggle has strong claim to be the great literary event of the twenty-first century'
Guardian

'A mesmerising, thought-provoking and genuinely important work of art'
Spectator


Book 6

Book 6

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Published 17 September 2019

Book 6

Book Six

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Published 18 September 2018
The final installment in the long awaited, internationally celebrated My Struggle series.

The full scope and achievement of Knausgaard's monumental work is evident in this final installment of his My Struggle series. Grappling directly with the consequences of Knausgaard's transgressive blurring of public and private Book Six is a troubling and engrossing look into the mind of one of the most exciting artists of our time. Knausgaard includes a long essay on Hitler and Mein Kampf, particularly relevant (if not prescient) in our current global climate of ascending dictatorships.