Min Kamp I-VI

Min kamp #1-6

by Karl Ove Knausgård

This edition comprises all 6 books, published between 2009 and 2012.

Karl Ove Knausgårds Min kamp innebar en enorm litterær satsning, og er en stor bok i mer enn én forstand: Min kamp ble utgitt som seks romaner.

Romanen åpner med en svimlende beskrivelse av døden. Derfra fortelles det om forfatteren Karl Ove Knausgårds kamp for å mestre livet og seg selv og sine egne ambisjoner på skrivingens vegne, i møte med de menneskene han har rundt seg. Min kamp. Første bok utforsker det å vokse opp og være overgitt en verden som ser ut til å være komplett, avsluttet, lukket. Romanen beskriver det unge blikkets varhet og usikkerhet, der det registrerer andre menneskers tilstedeværelse og vurderinger med en åpenhet som er voldsom og nesten selvutslettende i sin konsekvens.

I en borende prosa som oppsøker det sårbare, det pinlige og det eksistensielt betydningsbærende, blir dette en dypt personlig roman, selvutprøvende og kontroversiell. Et eksistensielt omdreiningspunkt er farens død, et annet er kanskje hovedpersonens debut som forfatter.

Min kamp. Andre bok er en studie i ekstremrealisme, en rasende nedsenkning i det daglige, i det hverdagslige, i ydmykhet og selvydmykelser og sterke fascinasjoner.

Min kamp. Andre bok er en roman om kjærlighet og vennskap, foreldre og svigerforeldre, om livet med små barn i en svensk by, om skrivingen som et forsøk på forløsning, en overskridelse av egne begrensninger.

Min kamp. Tredje bok er en roman om barndom.

En familie på fire, mor, far og to gutter, flytter til Sørlandet, til et nytt hus i et nytt byggefelt. Det er tidlig på 1970-tallet, barna er små, foreldrene unge, framtiden er åpen. Men på et eller annet tidspunkt lukkes den, på et eller annet tidspunkt blir det som hender dem, gitt. Hvem eller hva er det som gir?

Min kamp. Tredje bok beskriver en verden hvor barn og voksne lever parallelle liv, som aldri møtes. Romanen handler om et barns gryende selvforståelse, om hvordan det som har hendt griper inn i det som hender, om å være gjennomtrengt av en lengsel etter andre eksistensmuligheter og andre verdener inne i det kjente.

Etter tre år på gymnaset i Kristiansand reiser Karl Ove til Nord-Norge som lærervikar. Han møter en ny verden, og bærer med seg erfaringer han ikke selv forstår. Romanen skriver frem en ung manns ufordervete grandiositet og selvpåførte ydmykelser, oppriktigheten og umodenheten og hungeren etter eksistensiell og seksuell forløsning.

Femte bind av den selvbiografiske romanen Min kamp er skrevet med voldsom kraft og oppriktighet. Karl Ove flytter til Bergen for å gå på Skrivekunstakademiet. Det blir en gedigen skuffelse; han vil så mye, skjønner så lite, og får ingenting til. Med et tilsynelatende grunnløst pågangsmot fortsetter han likevel å skrive og lese. Flere av de han kjenner, blir antatt og debuterer som forfattere, og han begynner å tenke at han selv i beste fall kan bli en habil litteraturskribent, men ikke kunstner.

Gradvis endrer skrivingen seg. Forholdet til verden rundt ham endrer seg også. Slik blir dette en roman om nye, sterke vennskap, og et alvorlig, omskakende kjærlighetsforhold, inntil romanen igjen når frem til det eksistensielle omdreinings-punktet som kanskje er den avgjørende impulsen for romanserien: faren dør, Karl Ove debuterer som forfatter og alt bryter sammen.

I romanverket Min kamp utforsker Karl Ove Knausgård nådeløst og selvutleverende sitt eget liv, sine ambisjoner og svakheter, sin usikkerhet og tvil, sine relasjoner til venner og kjærester, kone og barn, mor og far. Det er et verk der livet beskrives i alle nyanser, fra de avgjørende, rystende øyeblikkene til hverdaglivets minste detaljer. Det er også et risikabelt prosjekt der grensene mellom det private og det offentlige overskrides, ikke uten omkostninger for forfatteren selv og for menneskene som beskrives. I sjette og siste bok handler det om realiseringen av verket: om utgivelsen av de tidligere bindene og omstendighetene rundt, om litteraturen selv og dens forhold til virkeligheten.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Philosophy, Classics, Mental Health

3600 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2009

About the author

Nominated to the 2004 Nordic Council’s Literature Prize & awarded the 2004 Norwegian Critics’ Prize.

Karl Ove Knausgård (b. 1968) made his literary debut in 1998 with the widely acclaimed novel Out of the World, which was a great critical and commercial success and won him, as the first debut novel ever, The Norwegian Critics' Prize. He then went on to write six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle (Min Kamp), which have become a publication phenomenon in his native Norway as well as the world over.

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-edit of my review of 5 years ago
An introverted man who writes 3.600 pages about himself, what should we think about that kind of a contradiction? And Karl Ove Knausgard seems to me a hyper-introvert case, at least that is the image that we get presented in this 6-part cycle. He almost constantly points to his inferiority, not fitting in socially, always falling short as an adolescent, as a teacher, as a writer, as a husband and as a father. Time and again he illustrates that with concrete examples, 6 books long, in the meanwhile sketching his personal biography. As said, what is especially striking is that he does not spare himself: all his stupid actions and statements, his darkest thoughts and even his absolutely bad thoughts about other people..., he throws it all on the table. In interviews he claims that he has been absolutely honest, has not withheld anything, has not proposed anything other than how he thinks it really was (although from the last part we learn that there was quite some editing, to prevent juridical actions from people whose feelings risked to be hurt). As an historian, I obviously know that such honesty is relative: every review of one's own past is a construction, with at least unconscious distortions, and that can be no different for Knausgard; but I believe that he at least has attempted to be as honest as possible.

Then are we dealing with a masochistic personality here? Maybe, because it is not natural to put the vilest aspects of your own personality in the spot. But why did he do that anyway? Knausgard's own answer, - and again I believe him-, is that he wanted to show reality as it is, with its good sides (because there are quite some wonderful moments in the cycle) as well as its bad ones. A form of hyperrealism – post Flaubert - but from a very individual perspective.

This often results in page-long descriptions of banal and trivial situations: putting the children in bath, scruting the store shelves when shopping, the glances over and over again with other people, long car trips, ordinary conversations, and so on. Those very detailed passages can sometimes evoke annoying feelings, but for Knausgard they are clearly a statement: even in the 'small things' there is real life, not only in the grand or passionate deeds and situations. Occasionally these long, banal pieces are tedious, but I have to admit that after a few parts you become familiar with the process.

Moreover, that description of 'small' life also concurs with another statement of this series: real life is in the 'now', not in the past or the future, but in reality as it now presents itself to us and in the way we deal with it now. We regularly see Knausgard burst into tears for the miracle of that 'now', the miracle of life itself, which even in its smallness and its ugliness has a huge grandeur. That yields beautiful, poetic passages, even though that greatness sometimes also crushes the individual Knausgard. Because that too is a recurring theme: the inner struggle between the desire for boundlessness, for freedom and liberty, for adventure and great things (traveling, writing the best novel of all time, etc.) and then the sobering confrontation with the limits of reality: the pressure of social conventions, the deadlines for novels, the crushing aspects of relationships, the hectic of a family life with children, and so on.

Knausgard may well highlight the small (and the big) in life, he focuses mostly and with much stress on his own interior self: we constantly learn what all kinds of events, statements or things in his environment do to him, how he looks at things and reacts (or doesn't react at all). And that introspection is almost always the reason for longwinding musings about these feelings (usually those of inferiority) and philosophical considerations on life or analises about how some of those aspects are presented by other great writers (Homer, Shakespeare, Joyce, Proust ...). The voluminous essayist piece (400 pages!) in the last book is an extreme enlargement of this, so much so that it seems to collide with the autobiographical character of the rest of the series, but in an ingenious way it really fits in.

Then the question remains whether this cycle as a whole can actually be called a successful experiment. Is it great literature? If I have to be honest: yes and no. Yes, because Knausgard is talking about essential things, he has uniquely exposed himself completely and zoomed in on his 'I' and the 'now' as no one has ever done before, and in some passages he knows to make the miracle of the world and life almost tangible. But on the other hand also no: that focus on himself also has its weak moments, it takes a long time before you realize what it is about, the long passages about trivial things are sometimes outright tough to digest, and the nagging about all kinds of situations sometimes just gets boring. Personally, I think that with parts 1, 2 and the beginning of part 6 you certainly have the essence of this cycle.

Finally, I return to my initial question: what to think about a hyper-introvert man who writes 3.600 pages about himself? My answer: that he is Karl Ove Knausgard, and that he is a real person and a real writer. Nothing more, nothing less. My guess is that he would be very satisfied with that answer!

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here are my reviews of the six books of My Struggle:



1. Book 1: A Death in the Family - Oct 27, 15 - ★★★★★
2. Book 2: A Man in Love - Nov 9, 15 - ★★★★
3. Book 3: Boyhood Island - Dec 8, 15 - ★★★★
4. Book 4: Dancing in the Dark - Dec 20, 15 - ★★★★
5. Book 5: Some Rain Must Fall - May 9, 16 - ★★★★★
6. Book 6: The End - Dec 9, 18 - ★★★★

[Théo d'Or]

The first part is over. It was like a boxing match, between me and Knausgård, you know, like in the boxing scene with Chaplin, with the mention that Knausgård doesn't know how to defend himself, this leading him to a lightning ko.
Chaplin didn't know how to box either, but he had the gift of improvisation.
Otherwise, my first struggle was explaining to myself ( and my self is more permissive than France's foreigner intégration policy ) - why the fuck I was reading a damned, boring autobiography . Why I'm saying boring ? Maybe some would consider it otherwise, but, for me, it's like saying that your child is the most beautiful in the world. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but that's how you see it, because that it is yours. The same thing with the autobiography.
So, my second struggle was keeping my place in the book, without losing my mind, as the sheer length and density of Knausgård's prose often left me flipping back and forth, trying to remember where I left off and what profound insight I have just read.
My third struggle was not feeling envious of Knausgård's literary success, as his ability to turn the mundane details of his life into a critically acclaimed series made my possible own writing aspirations seem modest in comparison, leaving me to wonder if I should start chronicling my grocery list and medical appointments .
My fourth struggle was trying to find the humor in Knausgård's serious tone, as his relentless focus on existential angst and the minutiae of daily life often left me searching for moments of levity, imagining him cracking a rare smile, or making a dry, self-deprecating joke. No, I'm not saying that the book should have made you burst out laughing once every 3 minutes, but inserting some spiritual stuff didn't kill anyone, so far. That's why Balzac is still " alive ", against the passage of time. There is an example of how he inserted à dose of humor into something as serious as possible. On the day of the death of one of his very rich uncles, who left him a substantial inheritance, Balzac announced the event as follows : " Today, at 5 o'clock in the morning, my uncle and I passed into a better world ". So, it's feasible.
My fifth struggle was not getting distracted by my own thoughts, while reading about Knausgård's, as his deep dives into his psyche some times triggered my own introspective spirals. After all, I wasn't participating in a therapeutic session.
My sixth struggle was trying to find the deeper meaning in a chapter about cleaning the house. Yes, a chapter about cleaning the house. Yes, you, ferocious male, throw the fuckin' remote control, and take the broom ! The meanin' of life is well-hidden in the dust on the piano in the bathroom.
Mais bon, here I close my eyes, thinking of the wealth of technical-naval details, given by Melville in Moby Dick, a book which delighted my childhood, despite of all those details. Ahab made up for all that suffering.
Knausgård should have found his own " Ahab".

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read all six volumes a few years ago. Volumes I to V were easy to devour — Boyhood Island being, in my humble opinion, the best of them. I was misled by those who called him the new Proust; he’s miles away from producing what Proust once did to me.

The last volume was dreadful — long, boring, and endured only because I’d already invested too much time. Still, I’ll give him this: without My Struggle, I might never have found Fosse.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

My ratings for each of the 6 volumes:
Volume 1-5 stars, V2-5 stars, V3-5 stars, V4-3 stars,V5-5 stars, and V6-5 Stars. But the 3 stars for V4? It didn't feel right, as if a different author was writing. If I recall correctly, in V4, Knausgard says he didn't masturbate until age 19. I didn't believe that and other examples of sex. Knausgard admits in V6 that elements of V4 weren't exactly true. That gives me an average of 4.6, or 5 stars here on goodreads. This might be the first great reading experience, for me, of the 21st century. And, thankfully, this is unfilmable, except maybe as a TV series.

[Stephen Sagarin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read and loved all six volumes.

Book 6 was slow to start—I worried that Knausgaard had lost it a bit (as some reviewers claim); he’s now a well-known author, and the snake is eating its tail... But the book gained steam—life, poetry, Hitler’s rise to power... And the searing description of Knausgaard’s wife’s bipolar disorder at the end mirrors the searing description in Book 1 of cleaning up after the death of his father. So, for the last 900 pages or so, I was as hooked as I’ve been with previous volumes.

Here are some points I don’t believe other reviewers have made, or not made clearly enough:

1.) Yes, Knausgaard’s ballsy title appropriates Hitler’s title. But an equally important question is, what is Knausgaard’s struggle? I would say, throughout, that it’s simply the struggle to be human. As such, it’s our struggle—even Hitler’s struggle—even if our approaches and answers are not Knausgaard’s, even if he’s not particularly good at it.

2.) The brilliance of Knausgaard’s work is not in the pedestrian style, or anti-style, as many have pointed out. It’s not even in the set pieces, or observations, or thoughts, or reviews, or reveries… In each case, we can probably find some author who has treated the subject with greater facility and depth. But that’s not the point. The brilliance is in the facility with which Knausgaard moves from each to each. Just like life—changing a diaper one minute, then thinking deep thoughts, then facing a family crisis or lawsuit, then deep, then shallow… More than any other author, Knausgaard seems effortlessly not to indulge a stream of consciousness, but a move from the mundane to the profound, the momentary to the durable, the inside to the outside, a stream of life.

3.) A lot has been made of the line between fact and fiction, but, as a non-Norwegian, this business of upsetting the living doesn’t matter to me, nor should it. How many persons have been thinly fictionalized and offended that those who know, know? And it doesn’t matter if anyone can demonstrate (as Gunnar, the uncle, threatens but fails to do) that Knausgaard’s memory is faulty. All memories are faulty. The line between memory and imagination is so thin that it’s often not discernible—and that’s part of the ice on which Knausgaard skates. The attempt to achieve perfect honesty cannot yield perfect accuracy. And, in the end, it doesn't matter if Knausgaard has made up every character in the book, including his own.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many thanks to the author of this inexhaustible novel for invaluable insight into myself and the culture I arose from, bravo! Knausgård's prose blurs the boundaries between what is my individual self and what is our collective We. What was previously vague notions just below consciousness is lifted up and forward so that they can be clearly understood as thoughts. This, combined with a filterless description of the everyday, closely followed and roughly incorporated by philosophical digressions of literature, art and meaning, results in an almost dreamlike state in which the hours fly by. It was a true pleasure to read.

Mange takk til forfatteren av denne uutømmelige romanen for uvurderlig innsikt i meg selv og kulturen jeg stammer fra, bravo! Knausgårds prosa utvisker grensene mellom hva som er mitt individuelle jeg og hva som er vårt kollektive vi. Det som tidligere befant seg som anelser rett under bevisstheten løftes opp og frem slik at de kan begripes tydelig som tanker. Dette, i kombinasjon med en filterløs beskrivelse av det hverdagslige, tett etterfulgt og omtrent inkorporert av filosofiske digresjoner om litteratur, kunst og mening, er resultatet en nesten drømmeaktig tilstand der timene raser avgårde. Det var virkelig en fryd å lese.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took a hiatus in the middle of Book Six and came back to it a few months later. When I did, it was like the scales had fallen from my eyes and so much more of what I was reading made sense and really resonated. It's a long and challenging read but, man, am I sure I did it.

[David Gunton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought Book 6 was a bit of a mess, but the six books as a whole: spectacular, never read anything like it.

[Joke Pereira]

Ik heb inmiddels twee delen gelezen en ben helemaal weg van deze schrijver!
Het volgende deel ligt al klaar!

[Hélène Wilkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m finally doing this, I’m writing up what I thought of the multi-volume My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgård, translated from Norwegian into English by Don Bartlett (mostly) and Martin Aitken, even though I haven’t finished reading volume 6 and it’s likely I never will. I really thought I was going to be one of those readers who would plough through all the thousands of pages, eagerly waiting for the translation of every single volume. The reason I gave up in the end was that although the first two books bowled me over and blew my mind, the magic slowly became diluted over the following books. There, that was the short version of my take on My Struggle.


Here is the longer version, with the positives first.

To me, books 1 and 2 were magical, page-turners to beat all page-tuners and I read them in quick succession. In fact, so keen was I to zip through them that I can’t remember there being an actual break between the first two parts of this mammoth literary undertaking, a pompous but accurate description I feel.

Even in the first few pages, I got the sense that I was embarking on a new reading experience with this book, combining many autobiographical elements and general musings on life, literature and relationships. Stated like that, you might think, well yes, it’s a novel, plenty of novels (most of them probably) draw on the author’s life and experiences and expound on profound topics along the way. However, what became quickly apparent on reading this extraordinary, weighty opus was the quality of precision in the narration – every single action, word and thought is transcribed in exhaustive detail, with the result that in many cases, I felt I was not so much reading as engaging in an act of voyeurism.

As a reader, I was constantly looking over Knausgård’s shoulder as he filmed/recorded/transcribed scene after scene of his relationship with his father, especially in the early volumes, and with his wife and their children, brother, friends etc. I’m sure that the searing depiction of a conversation with his grandmother towards the end of book 1 has been etched in the memory of many readers, not just mine. The mastery displayed there was, I felt, breath-taking. I just couldn’t get enough of it (Zadie Smith put it this way: “I need the next volume like crack”.) My husband commented that I had never spoken so much about any other book I had read. Yes, I was a KOK junkie.


There are many such brilliant scenes and although I wouldn’t place humour as the most characteristic feature of his writing here, I did laugh out loud at the description of the music-for-toddlers session that his wife asked him to take his young daughter to. Karl Ove, one of the three dads in the midst of mums, hates everything about the session and endures agonies of resentment and humiliation, from his tall size (“Everything was gentle and friendly and nice, all the movements were tiny, and I sat huddled on a cushion”) to the fact he would in other circumstances happily have shagged the teacher. (She asks his name: “The attractive young woman looked at me and sent me a smile of encouragement.-Karl Ove, I said sombrely. -Then let’s start with our welcome song.”) You can see the teacher’s bright smile so clearly, the seriously involved parents and the little ones being little ones, the whole thing reeking of a middle class lifestyle.

More typical are idle thoughts, in the most prosaic situations, that shine a light on discomforting truths about our perceptions, the judgments we make and the embarrassment we often experience when we acknowledge their truth. Take this shopping situation, where the author is pondering the best way to pay for an item of small value. “But this time I had no change on me, and it was ridiculous to use my card for such a small sum. On the other hand, did it matter what she thought about me? She was so fat.”


And just as cuttingly, and I would be the sort of person who is being judged here, this is what Knausgård says about “a nice place (…) full of plants with a fountain, where you could sit in the summer (…) The only downside was the clientele, which for the most part consisted in cultured women in their fifties and sixties”.

It’s the strangest of things: the books compel readers to devour them … and readers to squirm (well me, at least).

It’s obviously a very fine balancing act but at what point does squirming and feeling voyeuristic turn you off a book? I mean, when you’re reading about a young teenager who disastrously misunderstands or chooses to ignore the obvious (obvious to anyone else of course) “I like you” signals from a nice girl prepared “to take things further” with him, that makes for realistic but in a way quite sweet tale. However, recalling how he voted for himself to be class delegate, didn’t engage with a parent at the school he was teaching to help the “odd one out” student, not to mention his struggles with premature ejaculation, all these incidents hit the too-much-cringe-inducing-information barrier for me. Of course, everyone will have their own threshold and I guess the point is that Knausgård chose to set all these self-inflicted humiliations out. Fair enough. (And of course, he is writer, so he may have simply chosen to write out these incidents, real or not. This might be even more weird, but it could be so. Also, we should always remember that people, and in this case, protagonists in the books, remember trivial and important events in very different ways…)

I admit that reading these books has shaped/warped my view of Scandinavia somewhat. I say Scandinavia because in my mind I lazily lump them and Denmark, Finland and Iceland together on this. Probably because I don’t know these countries… Anyway, two things struck me particularly.

First was the accent placed on the quantities of alcohol consumed and the damage it inflicts, a fact faced unflinchingly through the stories of various characters, including the author’s. I knew of course that alcoholism, together with high rates of suicides and divorce were meant to be particularly prevalent in places where light is absent for a long period of time, although I’m not so sure that more southern places fare better to be honest, (but I’m not going to check right now, I would probably have to sift through far too many statistics). However, the seeming inevitability of the need for drunkenness does seem to mark many characters. Alcohol is also a key character in these narratives.

Second was the weirdest teacher training programme ever. I thought Scandinavians had the most enlightened education systems barring none but here is Karl Ove sent off to a middle school in the north of the country to teach teenagers barely older than himself (he is 18), with no experience whatsoever and what reads like rudimentary mentoring. I remember discussing this with a Norwegian lady I met once, who agreed with me when I reminded her of the episodes in book 4 (It turns out she knew Knausgård from school but hadn’t kept in touch.)


Now for the negatives.

I’ve not given book 6 a chance, despite the very nicely worded “reading guide” by Penguin (a nice change when I think how many blurbs are badly written/give away too much, and don’t get me started on “Questions for a book club discussion” at the end of books – shudders) encouraging me to do so. And I do allow myself to not finish a book, or in this case a sixth book. But pretty much from the start, I thought “the publishers haven’t dared to touch this sacred cow”. Even if that were the case, the publishers may have decided that they were owed nothing at this point. In any case, the author had free rein to lengthily describe the effect his books had on his family, especially his uncle and his first wife and also the impact it had on him, as some of the Knausgårds reacted very negatively. Once again, the shame and the angst are dwelt upon.

But fundamentally, perhaps there was just too much of a wait between the last two volumes. The huge acclaim of the earlier books certainly added another dimension to the series and without a doubt contributed to the delay in publishing the last, huge book. In other words, for me, “le soufflé était tombé” (loose translation: the magic had fizzled out). Of course, if I do read the final volume, I may change my mind and if so, I will make amends in an addendum to this blog.


Also, I can’t help myself, I’m going to say something negative about a living person. I find Karl Ove Knausgård, as depicted in these five and a bit books and several long articles by him that I have read, an intensely irritating person.

In one article published in the New York Times, where he describes the loss then recovery of his backpack, complete with laptop, he explains that “when you lose things, it means you’re not on your guard, you’re not trying to control everything, you’re not being so anal all the time — and if you aren’t, but allow yourself to be open to the world instead, then anything at all might come to you.” Even if he does add “I know that’s true, but at the same time I also know that the reason I say it is to turn all my faults and weaknesses into strengths (…) That means I’m a writer, I think I’m not so focused on worldly matters, which in turn means that some day I just might write a masterpiece.” I want to scream. I want to yell that being a good writer is not synonymous with being useless about looking after stuff! Likewise in book 1, where he notes that he sees “families who successfully organize themselves in this way. The children are clean, their clothes nice (…) They go on weekend trips, rent cottages in Normandy, and their fridges are never empty. They work in banks and hospitals, in IT companies or on the local council (…) Why should the fact that I am a writer exclude me from that world?”

Er, well Karl Ove, it doesn’t necessarily, you know, so tell me, why do you think it should exactly? The irony of course, is that all these families do “turn up at the nursery with crazed eyes and a face stiffened into a mask of frustration” every now and then too. And your work life is a thundering success, so…

Still, it’s easy to observe others, harder to observe oneself, unless you write about you in over 3,500 pages perhaps?

[Arvind Radhakrishnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a phenomenal work! I loved all the six volumes.It is such a deep and honest meditation on life.A Proustian exploration that looks straight into the inner core of human existence. Knausgaard's prose is so magical and addictive. His narrative style feels raw,direct,and, uncompromising. His honesty shines through as much as his literary talent. Very few people can examine their own life as well as those of their close family members so deeply. I can identify with his mindset and feel that he sees life and the world like I do. Guess that's why we relate more to certain writers than others. It makes me wish that I could write something similar recounting my torrid experiences with lousy relatives! :) Most of these relatives are intellectually shallow,petty minded folks with strong fascist leanings not to mention their obsession with money,gold and real estate prices.Just a nest of vipers.Maybe I should pen a book on my experiences with them.:)

I am so elated that there is a contemporary writer who has penned a great work that is worthy of the great masters of literature. So much of contemporary fiction is mediocre stuff (including many Booker prize winners in the last few years) or just plain trash (including the books folks in social media and book clubs go starry eyed about.Many of them can hardly go beyond YA fiction,graphic novels,fantasy etc.Just grow up!).I was getting very irked about this.Witnessing folks praising such shallow books and discussions around the same in forums were akin to mutilating my mind. That's why reading this brilliant work was such a pleasurable experience for me.

This work has achieved what Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' managed to do with great aplomb in the early 20th century,it has raised the bar very high for literature in the 21st century.This is literature of the highest class.Karl Ove Knausgaard is certainly the great writer of my time.

[Theresa]

Book #1 was a struggle to get through. Kept thinking it would get more interesting because of Knausgard's other less autobiographical writing, like his book on Munch.

Overall, Book #2 showed growth and was more thought provoking. Still, the parts about his family life, which take up much of the book, sounded routine and familiar.

In Book #3, Knausgard returns to his childhood: He was afraid of his father and doesn't want his own children to be afraid of him.

In all of his books in this series: Knausgard's writes from the "surface of his brain." A quote from one of his teachers. A publisher said of his writing: "It has too little to say and lacks pace." This is true of much of Knausgard's writing, especially his six volumes of "My Struggle." The fact that it has been published in various forms makes me wonder if the male voice is so familiar, so comforting, publishers failed to question whether his manuscript has substance or value in the way they do other voices.

I'm glad I checked out his work from the library and did not invest in his books. While some might like "A Time for Everything," what he has to say about Munch in "So Much Longing in So Little Space" is the only work I recommend others read.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed these a lot. The first volume's cleaning scene made me realize how effective ultra realism can be. The pacing of these volumes is really spot on; you settle into a routine with Knausgard and are constantly being entertained or enlightened with some small truth about life or revealing, embarrassing tidbit. The fifth volume about the writer's life is my favorite, but they're all worth it. Some highlights: a depressing family vacation with a clown and time share sales pitch, rooftop concert, extremely lengthy discourse on Celan, Hitler, and evil. As well as helping us understand himself, Knausgard helps us understand the difficulty of knowing other people. And understand how we all look to each other. His portrayal of his father in particular is really heartbreaking when you realize that he, like Knausgard, was also trying to understand himself. Self-introspection can be difficult, especially when other people become involved. I'm glad that Knausgard decided to write about it.

[Sean Kinch · Rating 5 out of 5]

20 days to finish the 1157-page final volume, totally worth it. The middle section—infamously, a 450-page essay on Hitler—turns out to be an engagingly personal examination of our ethical outlook and the implications of the “I” we present to the world.

[Jesse Liberty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. There is a reason he is compared with Proust. The sixth book has a 400 page exegesis on Mein Kampf and on the meaning of I/We/They which is good but long. The rest is, as are the first 5, terrific.

[Robin Dronsfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finns det mer att säga om Min Kamp?

Jag känner att jag måste säga något pretentiöst, trots att det tar emot lite: När jag läser Knausgård blir jag, utan överdrift, en bättre människa. Det är en märklig sanning som jag nästan skäms över att både känna och skriva. Skammen – ett tema som löper genom både läsare och Min Kamp.

Det handlar inte om att jag plötsligt börjar hjälpa äldre över vägen, skänka pengar till välgörenhet eller ringa gamla vänner för att berätta hur mycket de betyder för mig. Inte heller är det så att Knausgård ger mig aforismer och citat som ekar i huvudet och formar mitt beteende. Det som händer är snarare att jag försätts i ett tillstånd som jag älskar att vara i: ett medvetet varande. Min blick skärps, jag är. Saker händer, och jag ser dem – betraktar och accepterar dem utan att värdera. Jag låter mig vara den jag är just nu, utan krav eller masker. Hans text suger mig in, och i dess dragningskraft finns också ett sug mot nuet, ett beroende av att bara vara, som hänger i när boken ligger på sängbordet.

I litteraturen uppstår alltid en skiljelinje mellan berättelsen och verkligheten. Verkligheten är ritningen; berättelsen är det som byggs, kanske ett skepp. När författaren väljer ord, prövar rytm och satsmelodi, och formar texten efter sitt uttryck, blir berättelsen mer litterär än verklig. Skiljelinjen växer. Ritningen omvandlas till plankor som fogas samman. Författaren gallrar bort det irrelevanta, slipar och sammanfogar tills berättelsen får form. Dialoger skrivs för att utveckla karaktärerna och driva intrigen framåt. Så seglar berättelsen iväg, medan verkligheten förblir en ritning som ligger kvar i en bortglömd redskapsbod.

Knausgårds unika gärning, tänker jag, är att han suddar ut denna gräns. Han bygger inte skeppet – han beskriver ritningen. Hans strävan är att skriva så nära verkligheten som möjligt. Det är i detta han har hittat sin röst. I Min Kamps kölvatten har det skapats en oändlig mängd tolkningar och efterkonstruktioner – av media, hans familj och honom själv. Varför skrev han egentligen Min Kamp? Jag tror svaret ligger i formen.

Jag slås av hur Min Kamp lyckas fånga livet i dess olika faser – som barn, tonåring, ung vuxen och småbarnsförälder – med en ständig träffsäkerhet. Det är ett liv som beskrivs. Och Knausgård får det att kännas så lätt, jag tänker på de där riktigt duktiga fotbollsspelarna som får sporten att se enkel ut. Så är det med Knausgård, han gör det så bra - och får det att se så enkelt ut.

Med den här serien är det så att upplevelsen är högre än de enskilda ögonblicken. Att ha varit igenom den är en ackumulerad höjdpunkt som överträffar alla de enskilda verken.

[Martin Crouchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fact that over a period of years I read all 6 volumes,speaks for itself. The fact that he could write 6 volumes about a life that was essentially without a single significant incident and I still kept reading, speaks for itself.
The 400 pages in the latter half of the final book took me by surprise but explained what had occupied his mind for all those years giving birth to this unique piece of writing. His treatment of Hitler managed to see past the appalling image and into the mundane, identifying a perfect storm of random experiences and historical circumstances that changed the world. His opinions may not be shared be me or many others but we didn’t write 6 volumes

[Lauren Segarra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read book 2 first in 2015, and then proceeded to read 1, 3, 4, and 5 throughout 2015-2018. I finally read book 6 during 2020-january 2021. Knausgaard’s writing is addictive in a way that is difficult to describe. He writes about the mundane aspects of life. His writing is deeply human, reminding us all that we are complicated creatures. We are ugly, horrible, kind, beautiful, and tragic all at once. I loved this memoir and am sad that it is over (haha). The 400 page essay about hitler/Holocaust in book 6 was a bit dense to get through, but it was deeply interesting.

[Seda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Karl Ove Knausgaard is my favorite autobiographer and novelist in a way that his description of the world around him and his somehow complicated and fragile inner world as well. During my reading I can easily visualized his world and lived in that world with him which I think is not easy for every novelist writing an autobiography. Even it is a world which I am not familiar with I feel like I lived in all those Scandinavian cities with him with all the coldness, introvert nature and harsh conditions of North.
If you like Nordic literature it is definitely is a must-read.

[Damon Guinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually listened to the audio books for all six volumes. It was narrated by Edoardo Ballerini, who has amazing range and emotion as a voice-over actor. While I thoroughly enjoyed Knausgaard's descriptions of Norway, his coming-of-age insights, his philosophical observations, and his lexical dance with life-and-death scenarios, it was Ballerini's narration that kept me engaged six novels deep.

[Teoman]

I only read 1st volume. Liked being in Karl Ove's world.

[Oliver Holm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my second reading of "Min kamp", which ended up taking me one month exactly. The sum of all six books is greater than each single volume. And great indeed it is.

[Abhilash · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars to the series, that established Karl Ove as one of the best modern day writers (in bothe fiction and non-fiction).

[M. Chirimuuta · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not the story, it's how you tell it. Philosopher in the making. The book Heidegger wished he'd written.

[Rachèl Gerrits · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boooooring

[Paul Goodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant, extremely satisfying end to the cycle. A few teary moments, a few frustrating (not a poet, struggled with that not insubstantial part of his Hitler essay) but it was as visceral, personal and relatable as ever. Not bereft upon finishing, however. Just satisfied.

[Margery Osborne]

i didnt read he last and im not planning to but the others weren't listed in the data base. I really liked the first three. after that much less so