My Struggle: Book One: A Death in the Family

Karl Ove Knausgård, “My Struggle. Book One. Farewell”—an autobiographical, candid novel that instantly became an international bestseller.

“Farewell” is the first book of a six-volume autobiographical cycle “My Struggle” by the modern Norwegian classic. In it, the author writes with maximum openness about his childhood and teenage years, about his fascination with rock music, about his relationship with a loving but almost invisible mother and a distant, always unpredictable father—about the bitterness of loss and confusion after his death. When Karl Ove becomes a father himself, he has to find a balance between the need to care for his family and the desire to devote himself to writing…

Thanks to Knausgård’s uncompromising sincerity, the banality of everyday life acquires metaphysical depth in his text, which has often been compared to Proust’s novels.