Karl Ove Knausgård (NO) in conversation with Kathrine Tschemerinsky

The Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård is one of the most widely read and seminal authors in recent Scandinavian literary history. This spring, he can again be seen at the International Writers' Stage.

Third time at International Authors' Stage

Knausgård first visited the International Authors' Stage in 2009, when the first three volumes of My Struggle had been published in Danish. In 2019, he visited again – this time to talk about Edvard Munch, about whom he curated an exhibition in Oslo in 2017 and writes about in the book Så megen længsel på så lille en flade (2018).

The spring's long-awaited visit comes on the occasion of Knausgård winning the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Prize in 2022, while publishing The Wolves from the Eternal Forest in the same year. The conversation will illuminate the connection to Hans Christian Andersen, Knausgård's collected work, as well as what the future holds in relation to the 5-volume work he is currently writing.

Has expanded the framework of the novel genre

Today it is more than 10 years since Knausgård put an end to the colossal six-volume work My Struggle (2009-2011), which, since the publication of the first volume in 2009, has thrilled readers, critics and literary scholars alike. Over 3600 pages, Knausgård mixed fiction, essay writing and autobiography and expanded the framework of the novel genre in a way that made him a pioneer in the so-called autofiction.

In My Struggle, Knausgård comes close to e.g. the relationship with his father and his father's death, and the meticulous observations of an everyday life, and a life which one does not have to be a Norwegian man in order to recognise. The work delves into what it means to be human - from the small, everyday experiences to tons of pain and big existential questions. But how is it, when you have laid your own one life bare in writing, to go on to write about more than a dozen new lives and destinies in the new books? This is some of what the conversation will touch on when Knausgård visits The Black Diamond.

No longer a writer?

At the end of the sixth volume of My Struggle, Knausgård writes that he now wants to "enjoy - really enjoy the idea that I am no longer a writer". With an end to the novel series, he also put an end to the authorship - apparently! But to the great delight of Knausgård's many readers, he continued to write, and since My Struggle a steady stream of books has come from his hand.

In 2020, he published The Morning Star, which is his first novel since he finished My Struggle. In The Morning Star, Knausgård abandons the auto-fictional style that made him a world-famous author. Instead, over two days, we follow nine people who are connected in a web of different stories, and who have in common that they experience mysterious events that cannot be rationally explained. In 2022, a spiritual sequel was published, the great novel The Wolves from the Eternal Forest, which depicts a powerful story from the 1970s to the present day across Norway and Russia through six different narrators.

Participants

Karl Ove Knausgård

Karl Ove Knausgård made his debut in 1998, and today his works have been translated into 30 languages worldwide. He lives and works in England.

Knausgård has received a large number of awards, including the Norwegian Critics' Prize, the Brage Prize, Die Welt Literature Prize and the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. He received the Critics' Prize in the same year that he debuted as a writer with the novel Out of the World, which was published in Danish in 2005. In addition, A Time for Everything (published in Denmark in 2007) was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize, and most recently he has won the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Prize "for his intense renewal of the field between novel and autobiography, an area which Hans Christian Andersen also explored in a big way."

Kathrine Tschemerinsky

Kathrine Tschemerinsky is culture editor at Weekendavisen. She is educated in anthropology from the University of Copenhagen and Columbia University in New York. Tschemerinsky has worked as a literary writer for many years for, among others, Atlas Magasin and Weekendavisen, and is also the author of the book Turen går til bøgernes verden.