A Death in the Family
  • Published: 18 March 2013
  • ISBN: 9780099555162
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $22.99

A Death in the Family

My Struggle Book 1

Formats & editions
Paperback
18 Mar 2013
EBook
1 Mar 2012
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An addictive and searingly honest novel about childhood and grief from the international phenomenon, Karl Ove Knausgaard

One of the Guardian's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, an addictive and searingly honest novel about childhood, family and grief.

* Karl Ove Knausgaard's dazzling new novel, The Morning Star, is available to pre-order now *

Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about his life with painful honesty. He writes about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant and unpredictable father, and his bewilderment and grief on his father's death.

When Karl Ove becomes a father himself, he must balance the demands of caring for a young family with his determination to write great literature. Knausgaard has created a universal story of the struggles, great and small, that we all face in our lives. A profound and mesmerizing work, written as if the author's very life were at stake.

'A masterpiece... Its depiction of a family's disintegration is one of the most powerful pieces of writing I've read in years' Observer
  • Published: 18 March 2013
  • ISBN: 9780099555162
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle cycle has been heralded as a masterpiece all over the world. From A Death in the Family to The End, the novels move through childhood into adulthood and, together, form an enthralling portrait of human life. Knausgaard has been awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature, the Brage Prize and the Jerusalem Prize. His work, which also includes Out of the World, A Time for Everything and the Seasons Quartet, is published in thirty-five languages.

portrait photo of Karl Ove Knausgaard

Also by Karl Ove Knausgaard

The Wolves of Eternity
The Morning Star
In the Land of the Cyclops
So Much Longing in So Little Space
The End
Summer
Spring
See all

Praise for A Death in the Family

Strangely compelling

Bill Bailey, Daily Express

Knausgaard has a spectacular gift for finding profundity in the mundane details of his existence

Will Storr, Guardian

[A Death in the Family] should be read for its blazing account of a feared father set on self-destruction, the boredom and bewilderment of adolescence, and its flashes of sheet brilliance

Catherine Taylor

Intense and vital...ceaselessly compelling...superb

New Yorker

A masterpiece... Meticulously detailed, harrowing, oddly beautiful, its depiction of a family’s disintegration is one of the most powerful pieces of writing I’ve read in years

Observer, Books of the Year

The best book I read this year...full of artistic, moral and technical daring

Guardian, Books of the Year

This suburban epic, electrifying in candour and eloquence, feels streets ahead of the comparable Jonathan Franzen

Independent, Books of the Year

Incredibly moving

Irish Times, Books of the Year