Across 17 essays that span the author’s career to date, Karl Ove meditates on themes familiar from his fiction – where the conscious and unconscious meet, the limits on privacy, his intense and intensely personal reading of literature, philosophy, and art history, and the gulf between and overlap of creative and daily lives. As much as they impress for the enormity of their ambition, enterprise and their remarkable erudition, the essays in Sjelens Amerika demonstrate Knausgård’s trademark energetic self-scrutiny, and his deep longing – so familiar from My Struggle – fearlessly to experience the authentic reality of the world.
‘Knausgård’s essayistic capabilities are now world-famous, but it was only this year that his first collection of essays saw the light. … Staggering.’
Karl Ove Knausgård
Photo: Asbjørn Jensen
Karl Ove Knausgård published his first novel, Ute av verden, in 1998; it was the first debut novel ever to win The Norwegian Critics’ Prize. His second novel, En tid for alt (2004) was also a great critical success, published in English in 2009 and longlisted for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The autobiographical novel cycle Min kamp (2009-2011) (‘Scandinavia’s greatest literary event’ Helsingin Sanomat), an international phenomenon, comprises six novels, which have sold in excess of 600,000 copies in Norway. Karl Ove Knausgård lives in Sweden. He is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.
Rights sold to
Canada: Knopf
Denmark: Lindhardt & Ringhof
Germany: Luchterhand
Netherlands: De Geus
Norway: Oktober
Sweden: Norstedts
UK: Harvill Secker
USA: Archipelago
Foreign rights
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Awards
Winner of the 2016 Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence
Winner of 2015 Die Welt's Literary Award
Winner of the 2012 Gyldendal Award
Winner of the 2010 Book of the Year Prize in Morgenbladet
Winner of the 2010 P2 Listeners' Prize
Winner of the 2009 Brage Award
Winner of the 2004 Norwegian Critics’ Prize
Nominated for the 2011 Critics' Prize
Longlisted for the 2010 IMPAC Award Nominated for the 2010 Nordic Council’s Literature Prize
Nominated for the 2009 Norwegian Critics' Prize
Nominated for the 2009 Booksellers' Prize
Nominated for the 2009 Youth Critics' Prize
Nominated for the 2004 Nordic Council’s Literature Prize
