In a series of warm and often funny letters, Kim Adrian offers a compelling feminist critique of the six-volume autobiographical novel My Struggle, by Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard. The letters, addressed directly to Knausgaard, begin as a witty response to a seminal work and, over time, transform into a powerful interrogation of the darker social and cultural forces informing Knausgaard’s project. A meta-commentary on the curious feeling of intimacy great literature engenders, Dear Knausgaard is, ultimately, a heartfelt celebration of the act of reading itself.
An SPD (Small Press Distribution) bestseller.
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| U.K. Edition, Boiler House Press, 2022 |
- PRAISE -
"Kim Adrian's loving struggle with Knausgaard is the kind of criticism I most enjoy — personal, wonderfully engaged, intense but somehow simultaneously light-footed, and extremely intelligent. The brilliance of her feminist critique is that it acutely exposes vulnerabilities in Knausgaard's male universalism while affectionately acknowledging the scope and appeal of his inevitably gendered voice. A delight from start to finish." —James Wood, staff writer and book critic for The New Yorker
“The letters are intimate (discussions of Celan and Bachmann are peppered with mention of snacks and conversations with her husband), erudite, and often funny. On display is a rigorous mind, a fiery intellect, a curious and engaged reader. Adrian brings lofty ideas—questions of attention and meaning, of the troubling permeability between inside and outside, of reality itself—down to the meat-and-feeling human level.”
—The Boston Globe
“Adrian ruthlessly interrogates the work and the literary world at large, especially the misogyny that she finds in both places . . . [This] dynamic work of both literary and self-analysis will appeal to those passionate readers who have vacillated between adoring certain authors and wanting to throw their books across the room.”
—Publisher's Weekly
- U.S. EDITION -
Originally published in the U.S. by
Fiction Advocate (2020)
Fiction Advocate (2020)