Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle: Book One club guide and discussion.

Is It True that Even When Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Books Are Boring, They’re Amazing?

Is It True that Even When Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Books Are Boring, They’re Amazing?

Discussing new and classic works.
July 11 2014 1:44 PM

The Audio Book Club Meets Karl Ove

Slate critics debate My Struggle: Book One.

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This month, Dan Kois, David Haglund, and New York Times Book Review editor Parul Sehgal discuss My Struggle: Book One, the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-book autobiographical epic. Can the endless accretion of detail a masterpiece make? Would people respond differently to this domestic drama if a woman wrote it? And why is this book the toast of the literary world? Listen along!

We referred to a lot of stories about Karl Ove Knausgaard in this one. Here are some links!

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Next month the Audio Book Club will debate Roz Chast’s comics memoir of her parents’ slow decline, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Read the book and join us for our discussion on Aug. 8.

Visit our Audio Book Club archive page for a complete list of the more than 75 books we’ve discussed over the years. Or you can listen to any of our previous club meetings through our iTunes feed.

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See all the pieces in this month’s Slate Book Review.

Podcast produced by Abdul Rufus and Andy Bowers.

David Haglund is the literary editor of NewYorker.com. 

Dan Kois edits and writes for Slate’s human interest and culture departments. He’s the co-author, with Isaac Butler, of The World Only Spins Forward, a history of Angels in America, and is writing a book called How to Be a Family.

Parul Sehgal is an editor at the New York Times Book Review.