Book Club Guide

My Struggle Book 1

by Karl Ove Knausgard · 2009 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

The embarrassment of living — and of writing about living in this much detail
The father as wound — and the man you become because of him
Memory as the only material the writer has

About this book

Knausgård spent six years writing six volumes of minute, unsparing autobiography — covering his childhood in Norway, his difficult relationship with his alcoholic father, his family life and creative struggle. The first volume ranges across time and registers, introducing the obsessive intimacy and formal ambition that makes My Struggle one of the defining literary projects of recent decades.

Published in Norwegian in 2009, the first of the six volumes was translated into English in 2012. The project required Knausgård to be legally threatened by family members he had written about. It is considered one of the major literary projects of the 21st century.

Discussion questions

Knausgård writes about his father's alcoholism and death in minute, unsparing detail. What does this level of intimacy — with someone who cannot respond — achieve, and what does it cost?
The opening meditation on death is one of the most remarkable passages in contemporary literature. How does Knausgård establish the register of the whole project in these opening pages?
My Struggle uses the same title as Hitler's autobiography. What is Knausgård doing with this provocation — and is the choice justified by what the books actually are?
The prose is long, digressive, relentlessly present-tense even when describing the past. What does this style create — and what would be lost with shorter, more elegant sentences?
My Struggle has been compared to Proust's In Search of Lost Time. What do the two projects share — and where does the comparison fail?