The Third Realm
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  • Published: 8 October 2024
  • ISBN: 9781787304192
  • Imprint: Harvill Secker
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $34.99

The Third Realm

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
8 Oct 2024
EBook
3 Oct 2024
Audiobook
3 Oct 2024
Hardback
20 Nov 2024
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If no one ever died, what would happen then? Experience a major literary universe in the making from global bestseller Karl Ove Knausgaard.

‘Ferociously readable. . . I still can't get enough' The Times

If no one ever died, what would happen then?

For several days, a bright new star in the sky above Norway has blazed over the restless lives of those below. Tove, an artist, is consumed by intense creativity as she spirals towards psychosis. Line falls in love with a musician named Valdemar and is lured to a secret death metal gig in a remote forest. Geir, a policeman, is investigating a ritual murder but chances upon something more horrifying even than the bodies in the trees – the last bodies he sees, because, as undertaker Syvert is the first to realise, people have stopped dying since the star appeared.

What is haunting the world – and why?


As profound as it is thrilling, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Third Realm is a breathtaking novel about ordinary lives on the cusp of irrevocable change.

PRAISE FOR THE THIRD REALM

‘A visionary epic. . . an exemplary masterclass in what fiction can offer' Guardian

‘One of the most genuinely suspenseful, alluring books I’ve ever read. . . This book made me afraid of the dark again.’ Brandon Taylor, Washington Post

‘Unsettling, disturbing and riveting. . . as accessible and creepy as anything by Stephen King and as addictive as your favourite TV drama series. There is no writer I would rather devour’ Spectator

PRAISE FOR KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD:

'Addictive' Daily Telegraph

'Knausgaard retains the ability to lock you, as if in a tractor beam, into his storytelling' New York Times

‘Casts an existential spell. . . captivating' Financial Times
  • Published: 8 October 2024
  • ISBN: 9781787304192
  • Imprint: Harvill Secker
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $34.99
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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 Morning Star
The Wolves of Eternity
In the Land of the Cyclops
So Much Longing in So Little Space
The End
Summer
Spring
See all

Praise for The Third Realm

Readers who come to this book first will find an entertaining story about people sorting through spiritual, domestic, and emotional confusion. But those who’ve read the prior novels will get a deeper sense of just how fascinating, frustrating, and unknowable we can be to each other, and the consequences of that disconnection.

Kirkus (starred review)

If you love Knausgaard…you’ll devour The Third Realm… it’s ferociously readable… I still can’t get enough

The Times

Unsettling, disturbing and riveting... As we become privy to the characters musings on philosophy, religion, art, neuroscience and love, they grow ever more compelling.... as accessible and creepy as anything by Stephen King and as addictive as your favourite TV drama series. There is no writer I would rather devour

Spectator

I still can't get enough...The compulsion to keep reading springs from the author’s ability to transcribe patterns of thinking. His faith that access to other people’s consciousness might make us feel less alone remains a profound — and distinctly literary — conviction

The Times

Breathtaking...The book opens and closes with Tove…her mix of despair and insight, humour and visionary brilliance turns out to be what these novels need most… [The Third Realm] has such an electrifyingly capacious sense of what the novel can be

Guardian

A visionary epic... an exemplary masterclass in what fiction can offer

Guardian

One of the most genuinely suspenseful, alluring books I’ve ever read. Novel by novel, Knausgaard is replenishing some feral charge to the world. This book made me afraid of the dark again.

Brandon Taylor, Washington Post

The Third Realm… is primarily a meditation on the ordinary… compelling… At every turn…we see Knausgaard’s relish in depicting the unreliability of people’s thoughts

Literary Review

Intense… The presence of a detective investigating a ritual murder injects surprising pace, while distinctive meditations on mortality, the divine and mental illness prove enthralling

Mail on Sunday

[In] The Third Realm… Knausgaard unspools a philosophical cop drama shot through with shivery horror… In 2018 he said he’d been binge-watching Twin Peaks. No surprise that that show’s eerie tonal swerves are exquisitely channelled here

Daily Mail

Riveting

Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year*

Knausgaard has delivered yet another complicated, chilling and vastly enjoyable novel of ideas that poses more questions than answers

Times Literary Supplement

Knausgaard unspools a philosophical cop drama shot through with shivery horror…exquisitely channelled

Daily Mail
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