Tim Martin meets Karl Ove Knausgard (author of A Death in the Family):
When I arrive to meet Norway’s most notorious contemporary writer, the snow is doing its best to camouflage the tiny, low-lying Swedish village where he lives. Closeted in his book-lined study, with his three small children riveted to Pirates of the Caribbean next door, Karl Ove Knausgård collapses his six-foot-something frame into an armchair, lights the first of many cigarettes and drums a stockinged foot distractedly on the table. We’re here to discuss his strange and backwards success story of the past three years: how his six-volume, speed-written autobiographical novel, intended as a form of “literary suicide”, turned his life into a media soap opera and him into a household name (more...)
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