Arendal

A haunting new novel about forbidden love from Karl Ove Knausgaard, “one of the 21st century’s greatest literary sensations” (Wall Street Journal)

The year is 1976. Syvert Løyning is on his way home to his wife and two sons, Syvert and Joar, after a business trip when his car breaks down outside his hometown of Arendal, and he is forced to spend the night in the city. It is winter and bitterly cold. The ocean has frozen over, and ice spreads out away from the shore, so thick that cars can drive on it. There, with home so close and yet out of reach, Syvert is caught up in memories of his doomed love affair with Asya. Suddenly, he is overcome by the feeling he is no longer himself. He hesitates about visiting his mother who lives nearby but then is drawn almost involuntarily to her door after learning that a childhood friend has recently died. As he wanders the dark streets, something is shifting inexorably and dangerously both in the city but also within him.

An uncanny, otherworldly story of longing and betrayal, Arendal depicts a breakdown accompanied by a dream vision. Mesmerizingly returning to some of his greatest themes, Knausgaard writes about communing with the dead, about fire and ice, about dizzying starry skies, and about a man desperately in search of consolation.