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Staff Pick
In the second book of his new quartet, Knausgaard writes a daily observation to his unborn daughter. That such a book can be beautiful and sometimes overwhelming is a welcome surprise. Knausgaard's prose is exquisite. If you're not already reading his work, this is the perfect time to start. Recommended By Ashleigh B., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
The second volume in his autobiographical quartet based on the seasons, Winter is an achingly beautiful collection of daily meditations and letters addressed directly to Knaugsaard’s unborn daughter
2 December – It is strange that you exist, but that you don’t know anything about what the world looks like. It’s strange that there is a first time to see the sky, a first time to see the sun, a first time to feel the air against one’s skin. It’s strange that there is a first time to see a face, a tree, a lamp, pajamas, a shoe. In my life it almost never happens anymore. But soon it will. In just a few months, I will see you for the first time.
In Winter, we rejoin the great Karl Ove Knausgaard as he waits for the birth of his daughter. In preparation for her arrival, he takes stock of the world, seeing it as if for the first time. In his inimitably sensitive style, he writes about the moon, water, messiness, owls, birthdays–to name just a handful of his subjects. These oh-so-familiar objects and ideas he fills with new meaning, taking nothing for granted or as given. New life is on the horizon, but the earth is also in hibernation, waiting for the warmer weather to return, and so a contradictory melancholy inflects his gaze.
Startling, compassionate, and exquisitely beautiful, Knausgaard’s writing is like nothing else. Somehow, he shows the world as it really is, at once mundane and sublime.
Review
“One of the most satisfying elements of [Knausgaard’s] writing is the rendering of what it is like to be alive, to be a person in the world, whether alone or among people, to walk around as thoughts develop, or to hatch plans with others and participate in activities as a separate being and as part of a whole. His new series, a four-volume autobiography based on the autumn and winter seasons, offers a glimpse at how these effects are accomplished.” David Varno, The Brooklyn Rail
Review
“The author casts the world in a holy glow of surprise and compassion… A winningly interior journey into the most interior of seasons.” Kirkus Reviews, starred
About the Author
Karl Ove Knausgaard’s first novel, Out of the World, was the first ever debut novel to win The Norwegian Critics’ Prize and his second, A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven, was widely acclaimed. A Death in the Family, the first of the My Struggle cycle of novels, was awarded the prestigious Brage Award. The My Struggle cycle has been heralded as a masterpiece wherever it appears.