My Struggle: Book 1 [Paperback]

ANew York Timesbestseller,My Struggle: Book 1introduces American readers to the audacious, addictive, and profoundly surprising international literary sensation that is the provocative and brilliant six-volume autobiographical novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It has already been anointed a Proustian masterpiece and is the rare work of dazzling literary originality that is intensely, irresistibly readable. Unafraid of the big issuesdeath, love, art, fearand yet committed to the intimate details of life as it is lived,My Struggleis an essential work of contemporary literature.

1.My Strugglestarts with, of all things, an extended meditation on death. Knausgaard first describes what physically happens to our bodies after we die, and then he bemoans the fact that our societies are organized in such a way as to almost completely hide death from our lives. Why would someone start a book that tells the story of his life by talking about death? Do you think Knausgaard is right when he argues that we should be more aware of death in our day-to-day thoughts?

2. Knausgaard writes that as your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Do you agree that getting a wider perspective on your life reduces its ability to cause you pain? Do you feel that Knausgaard is, in part, writingMy Strugglein order to lessen the pain his own life inflicts on him? And what do you think about the trade-off he posits, that increasing our perspective lessens life's ability to impact us?

3. The first incident Knausgaard describes inMy Struggleis a memory in which, as an eight-year-old boy, he thinks he sees a face in the sea on the nightly news. He explicitly links this scene to Jesus Christ and Christianity, even though organized religion is rarely mentioned inMy Struggle, and Karl Ove does not seem like a very religious character. Why might Knausgaard give religion pride of plal“3