Last week, I was contacted by Archipelago Books in Brooklyn about doing a review of Norwegian author Karl Knausgaard's latest book, My Struggle: Book One.
With a goal of ten book reviews for the year and having produced all of zero to date, I readily agreed. That Knausgaard is a heavily decorated writer in his home country only adds a post-hoc validity to my decision. As Newt Gingrich demonstrates, wisdom is as much about appearance as it is about prescience.
According to the press release:
A Norwegian Marcel Proust. This nerve-striking, addictive piece of "hyper-realism," by the Norwegian Crtics' Prize-winning author of A Time for Everything, has created a phenomenon throughout Scandinavia. Written as though his very life were at stake.
Almost ten years have passed since Karl O. Knausgaard's father drank himself to death. He is now embarking on his third novel while haunted by self-doubt. Knausgaard breaks his own life story down to its elementary particles, often recreating memories in real time, blending recollections of images and conversation with profound questions in a remarkable way. Knausgaard probes into his past, dissecting struggles - great and small - with great candor and vitality. Articulating universal dilemmas, this Proustian masterpiece opens a windows into one of the most original minds writing today.
Mr. Knausgaard's work has been already published abroad as a behemoth, six-volume set. While the first book of the volume has yet to be released in the US, pre-release copies have earned glowing reviews from The New York Review of Books, and London's The Independent.
My Struggle is set for publication on May 12, 2012. Readers can pre-order a copy on Amazon here. More to come.
The Conservative Blog Network
0 comments:
Post a Comment