Description

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

Publisher Review

[A Death in the Family] should be read for its blazing account of a feared father set on self-destruction, the boredom and bewilderment of adolescence, and its flashes of sheet brilliance -- Catherine Taylor * i * A masterpiece... Meticulously detailed, harrowing, oddly beautiful, its depiction of a family's disintegration is one of the most powerful pieces of writing I've read in years * Observer, Books of the Year * The best book I read this year...full of artistic, moral and technical daring * Guardian, Books of the Year * Intense and vital...ceaselessly compelling...superb * New Yorker * This suburban epic, electrifying in candour and eloquence, feels streets ahead of the comparable Jonathan Franzen * Independent, Books of the Year * Incredibly moving * Irish Times, Books of the Year *