Top 3 books by Karl Ove Knausgård

The case of the Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgård it reminds me a lot of the French one Frédéric Beigbeder. Both authors, of full generational coincidence, insisted on turning literature into a spearhead of the most transgressive realism. Although, rather it can be said that they stormed the publishing market from a biographical account without adornment or vainglory.

The disappointments, the miseries, the deepest contradictions as sustenance for a vital philosophy of our days. As I already pointed out Dostoevsky: if God does not exist, everything is allowed. Both Karl and Frédéric were able to win over readers from all over the world with their stark biographies that cover up the references on what is ethical to narrate from one's own life.

A tone of confession becomes, on many occasions, the leitmotif that underlies each story. And like any confession, in the end the truth falls under the inertia of its resounding weight, capable of destroying that subjective impression of the world that each one's fiction raises.

Books that point to novels combined with the biographical. Meanwhile, enough narrative cunning to make the reader wonder where fiction ends and reality begins. And of course, in the case of Karl Ove Knausgard, nothing better than composing his biographical saga with the disturbing and replicated title of "My fight."

Top 3 Recommended Books by Karl Ove Knausgard

Death of the father

In a work as peculiar as "My Fight", it is always better to start at the beginning. The reasons that led Karl Ove to approach this composition are born from the same creative frustration of his literary transcript.

And the truth is that the story of stories that he could tell is written and well written in that present moment of his life. Rather than heal, time crusts over, and only a writer or a madman can insist on ripping until the flow of blood and pain are recovered once again.

The memory of a desperate father who only seeks his death leads the character Karl to his childhood. And it is not that he finds paradise or refuge there. There are children who very soon begin to move with a particular existential weight.

They are especially those who become aware that things are not going well at home. With overwhelming descriptions of that subjective world of the writer who was a child and who in both cases was carried away by the despair of someone who has not known happiness anywhere near, this first part begins to squeeze a juice that you can no longer stop reading until his sixth installment.

Death of the father

End. My fight 6

If you only want to achieve a kind of synthesis, then yes, perhaps by reading the first and last novels in the saga you could consider reading this fictionalized biography.

And yet we would miss everything, the interim, that time between the birth of a character and his departure from the scene, that behind-the-scenes reality that enriches the vision of the representation with all the details that can complete the glory of the action on the scenes. tables of the world.

Because in this End we link directly with the beginning, with the manuscript of The death of the father already prepared for publication. And that's when the subjective impression of a biography faces its nemesis. There are always people on whom we assault their world when we try to think of a life, a biography. Nobody is a watertight compartment. All existence converges in circles with many more existences.

Karl Ove had said everything about his father but his uncle understands that nothing is true and threatens to take action when the book is published. From a conflict of interest between publishers and family, this End seeks that truth that is born from the soul for the author. And that nevertheless ends up going into anxiety when another vision shakes his world.

The author projects us with his ingenious ability to approach the very general from the particular, to great historical moments and to all kinds of statements that are questioned before we come face to face with that End that sentences everything.

End. My fight 6

The island of childhood

It couldn't be true. No childhood can be, by definition, at least a piece of happiness. Unconsciousness is that happiness of ignorance, that denial of the fatal evidences of the world.

And childhood can only contemplate the world from its island, real in this case like Tromoy, although always metaphorical. The boy who was Karl Ove is now like everyone else, those flashes that fascinate by their brightness or disturb by their hasty remoteness, at times. Perhaps it is the book that most vital time understands, precisely because of that coming and going of memories that make up the canvas of those days for all of us.

Conceived as the third novel of "My Struggle", it could be read as that children's autobiography of anyone who also keeps the demons that guard it in their private treasure.

Only in Karl's case, his ability to link that existentialism with shades of predestination, magic, fatalism and crude realism, reaches a level of greater emotional intensity due to the arduous task of completely stripping the writer's own soul.

The island of childhood
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