My Struggle (Knausgård novels)
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| Author | Karl Ove Knausgård |
|---|---|
| Original title | Min kamp |
| Country | Norway |
| Language | Norwegian |
| Published | 2009–2011 |
| No. of books | 6 |
My Struggle (Norwegian: Min kamp) is an autobiographical series of six novels written in the late 2000s by Karl Ove Knausgård. The books cover his private life and thoughts, and unleashed a media frenzy upon its release, with journalists attempting to track down the mentioned members of his family. The series has sold half a million copies in Norway alone and has been published in 22 languages.
My Struggle is a six-book autobiographical series by Karl Ove Knausgård outlining the "banalities and humiliations of his life", his private pleasures, and his dark thoughts; the first of the series was published in 2009. It has sold nearly 500,000 copies in Norway, or one copy for every nine Norwegian adults, and is published in 22 languages. The series is 3,600 pages long, and was finished when Knausgård was in his forties. The English translation of the fifth book in the series arrived in the United States in April 2016.
Though categorized as fiction, the books situate Knausgård as the protagonist and his actual relatives as the cast, with his relatives' names mostly unchanged. The books have led some of those relatives to make public statements against their inclusion in Knausgård's novels.
As he struggled to write a novel about his relationship with his father, Knausgård set upon a new project in early 2008: to write less stylistically and deliberately and instead, to "write plainly about his life". He wrote mainly to break his block with the other novel and thought that there would not be an audience for the work. Knausgård would call his friend and fellow writer Geir Angell Øygarden daily and read the work aloud. Angell Øygarden felt that Knausgård needed encouragement to continue, and Knausgård felt that Angell Øygarden was essential to the project. Angell Øygarden eventually listened to 5,000 pages of the novel and proposed the series title, which he felt was perfect. The novel's Norwegian title, Min Kamp, is very similar to Hitler's Mein Kampf. The book's editor, Geir Gulliksen, originally forbade Knausgård from using the title, but later changed his mind. Knausgård's British publisher at the time was not interested in the book, and Knausgård did not protest the German translation publisher's decision to change the title in that region.
The difficult thing for me is that I want basically to be a good man. That’s what I want to be. In this project, I wasn’t. It is unmoral, in a way.
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