Karl Ove Knausgård, a devil is on the loose in Norway

Those readers who had the feeling of being a little orphaned when they finished reading the sixth and last book of

the series of autofiction books that launched Karl Ove Knausgård to literary stardom, are in luck.

The Norwegian writer with the appearance of an

singer has returned to narrative fiction with a surprising, addictive and hypnotic novel at times, but also irregular and sometimes maddening.

There are no more digressions of dozens and dozens of pages about literature, music or the obligation to socialize with the parents of your children's friends, while the protagonist waits his turn at the supermarket checkout or despairs before a clumsy pedestrian who stops his walking down the street, as happened in that memorable autobiographical project, now there is a lot of dialogue.

And a lot of action, especially in the first part of the extensive

(in Norway it was published in 2020 within a project that already has two more volumes published in his country in the following two years), also punctuated by reflections on death, especially, which include a small final essay as a coda that breaks with all the previous structure, or with the servitudes and self-justifications that the care of people with physical and mental problems generates.

At first it seems like a genre novel, horror, apocalyptic, popular, due to the resources used to capture and maintain the reader's attention and due to the presence of extraordinary, supernatural elements.

The first and foremost, because it marks all the action, is the appearance of a huge and luminous star in the last two days of summer (all the action takes place in those two days) in a town in Norway.

are brutally murdered, the forests and roads are invaded by thousands of crabs, a man who was presumed dead shows signs of life when they are going to remove his organs to donate them.

The devil is not far away.

The novel enters the fantastic path of Stephen King's novels, for example, to later take a break and leave the reader's expectations suspended when he has already accepted and assumed the constants of the genre.

The novel enters the fantastic path of Stephen King's novels, for example, to later take a break and leave the reader's expectations on hold when he has already accepted and assumed the constants of the genre.

The powerful visualization of the star that gives the book its title, under whose influence the behavior of animals or people is modified, is reminiscent of that planet destined to collide with the Earth from the magnetic film Melancholia, conceived by another tormented Scandinavian creator such

is Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier.

The title of one of the Norwegian novels,

is practically the same as that of the director's film starring the Icelandic Björk.

The narrator of Knausgård's latest novel is still in the first person, but it is no longer Karl Ove talking about his petty behavior as a read teenager or the death of his father, but nine characters, more or less interconnected, all of them dazzled. by the rising star, each with its own language and personality.

This brilliant stylistic exercise captivates the reader both in form and in content, although someone may get desperate with its detailed descriptions of daily habits such as brushing one's teeth.

The writer, father of five, breathes life into a teenage girl with a talent for singing who soothes her frustrations with food;

a machirulo journalist from the old school and alcoholic who suffers in the culture section until he finds the opportunity to shine again in events;

a professor of Literature with a supposedly enviable life who is upset by discovering a writing by his wife (who is suffering a psychotic break for which he thinks of admitting her, to free himself? as revenge?), in which he expresses his desire of fucking her neighbour's dilettante, the son of a rich shipowner who dedicates himself in his cabin to reading the Bible, Kierkegaard, Hölderlin or Nietzsche;

to an early childhood educator whose conscience bothers him for not having warned that a child hit his head when he fell from the diaper changing station; or to a young woman who is repulsed by the sexual advances of her husband's son, a renowned architect who he doubles in age, while wondering if he gave rise to them.

Among the gallery of characters, who go beyond the social mask they display, stands out Katherine, pastor of the Norwegian church who decides to spend the night in a hotel in her city and not return home, after a business trip to participate in a seminar on a new Bible translation (Knausgård himself participated as a consultant in a similar task).

Her husband is waiting for her, but she only feels the need to be alone.

Returning to her partner's side, a good man who takes good care of her two children, makes a world for her.

His life was “absolute, true”, but “nothing was open anymore”, she thinks.

As the novel progresses, the action is intermingled with the fiction of the dream, of the imagined, of the supernatural with an esoteric point that can tire or unsettle, like that long journey through the world of the dead among the Norwegian forests that one of the protagonists when he falls into a coma.

But Karl Ove Knausgård's new billet (780 pages) makes for an at times vibrant read, full of interesting observations.

And for the enjoyment of it it is not necessary to be a parishioner of his particular congregation.

Or if?

Find it in your bookstore

You can follow BABELIA on

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber