In the Land of the Cyclops - by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"This, which we perhaps could call inexhaustible precision, is the goal of all art, and its essential legitimacy." --Jessica Ferri, The Los Angeles Times

In his first essay collection to be published in English, the New York Times bestselling author of the My Struggle series Karl Ove Knausgaard explores art, philosophy, and literature with piercing candor and remarkable erudition.

Paired with full color-images, his essays render the shadowlands of Cindy Sherman's photography, illuminate the depth of Stephen Gill's eye, and tussle with the inner mechanics of Ingmar Bergman's workbooks. In one essay he describes the figure of Francesca Woodman, arms coiled in birch bark and reaching up toward the sky--a tree. In another, he unearths Sally Mann's photographs of decomposing corpses, so much so that branches and limbs, hair and grass, begin to harmonize.

Each essay bristles with Knausgaard's searing honesty and longing to authentically see, understand, and experience the world.

Review Quotes

"Knausgaard is less interested in answers than in authentic engagement with the world . . . In the Land of the Cyclops is another worthy addition to Knausgaard's oeuvre that aims to recapture this intense feeling and to see the world anew." --Phillip Garland, World Literature Today

"I appreciate Knausgaard revealing his unflattering first impression, then interrogating it, his willingness to go further, to look again, and to show how his mind moves, then changes . . . I want to see what Knausgaard sees, even when I'm overwhelmed by it or disagree . . . Boring down into any moment, thought, or artwork, offers its own thrilling spectacle. You don't want to look away." -- Bridget Quinn, Hyperallergic

"The collection, which also includes essays on Michel Houellebecq, Cindy Sherman and Kierkegaard, reads less like a book of criticism at times than a work of negative theology, circling the mysteries of artistic creation that cannot be directly articulated: What makes a book or a painting feel alive and relevant? Why should art, which occupies the realm of pure fantasy, have any rules at all?" -- Stephen Poole, The Telegraph

"Knausgaard's passion for interiority and the detail of the individual experience, the most brilliant elements of his fiction, come through . . . "In the Land of the Cyclops" proves that Knausgaard's struggle is still ongoing, the search for truth as a balance between reality and our experience of it: "This, which we perhaps could call inexhaustible precision, is the goal of all art, and its essential legitimacy."" -- Jessica Ferri, The Los Angeles Times

"Knausgaard argues that art is at its most effective when it destabilizes our understanding of the world...The moody, provocative black-and-white photos of Francesca Woodman reveal the "constraints of our culture and what they do to our identity" while Michel Houellebecq's novel Submission succeeds because it suggests how easily disillusioned people might accept political upheaval, asking "What does it mean to be a human being without faith?"...The throughline is the author's keen, almost anxious urge to understand the artistic mind." -- Kirkus Reviews

"In this . . . thought-provoking essay collection, Knausgaard once again displays his knack for raising profound questions about art and what it means to be human . . . These wending musings will be catnip for Knausgaard's fans. " -- Publishers Weekly

"Karl Ove Knausgaard explores the realm of the aesthetic where it overlaps with the quotidian in fact as he has in fiction . . . Much insight awaits any sifting through these disparate compositions . . . Knausgaard transforms the everyday into a portal of deep insight." -- John L. Murphy, Spectrum Culture

More Praise for Knausgaard's work:
- Intense and vital...Knausgaard is utterly honest, unafraid to voice universal anxieties...Superb, lingering, celestial passages...[with] what Walter Benjamin called the "epic side of truth, wisdom."-James Wood, The New Yorker
- As Jeffrey Eugenides so marvelingly put it, [Knausgaard] broke the sound barrier of the autobiographical novel...There's something primitive and hungry in that experience-and for me, sometimes, something spiritual, close to the exprience of grace. - Charles Finch, Slate
- What's notable is Karl Ove's ability, rare these days, to be fully present in and mindful of his own existence...as if the writing and the living are happening simultaneously...it immerses you totally. You live his life with him. - Zadie Smith, New York Review of Books
- ...so aesthetically forceful as to be revolutionary - Jesse Barron, The Paris Review
- My Struggle is a revolutionary novel that is highly approachable, even thrilling to read. The book feels like a masterpiece-one of those genuinely surprising works that alters the tradition it inherited. - Meghan O'Rourke, Bookforum
- The book kept me up until two almost every morning for a week...Real and singleminded in his storytelling." - Lorin Stein, The Paris Review
- Questions about precisely what fiction is and how it relates to reality and the extend to which traditional narrative can be a delivery vehicle for saying something true about life...lie at the intellectual and aesthetic heart of Knausgaard's huge undertaking. - Daniel Mendelsohn, The New York Times
- Knausgaard succeeds in producing prose that is "alive"...Such transgressive blurring of the borders between the public and private, sayable and unsayable, can be both life-affirming and riveting. - The Economist
- For all its complexity, My Struggle achieves something pretty simple, the thing that enduring fiction has always done: it creates a world that absorbs you utterly...[Book Six] is alive. - Theo Tait, Sunday Times
- Who'd have thought that the first monumental literary production of the 21st century...would seem, on a line-by-line basis, so modest and so raw? The books in the My Struggle series fly high by flying low, by scanning the intricate topography of everyday life. - Dwight Garner, The New York Times
- This deserves to be called perhaps the most significant literary enterprise of our times. - Rachel Cusk, The Guardian
- How wonderful to read an experimental novel that fires every nerve ending while summoning in the reader the sheer sense of how amazing it is to be alive, on this planet and no other. - Jeffrey Eugenides, The New York Times Book Review

About the Author