Karl Ove Knausgård’s “My Struggle,” a monumental novel in six volumes and more than 3,600 pages, has become the preeminent example of a current autofictional trend. Widely hailed for its heroic exploration of selfhood, compulsive readability, and restless experimentation with form and genre, “My Struggle” provides a sense of authenticity and intimacy that the contemporary novel has long been missing. Through an analysis of Knausgård’s extensive use of details and his radical character narration, Andersen proposes that “My Struggle” provides a blueprint for understanding autofictional novels more broadly, where the genre designation “novel” neither undermines the autobiographical aspect nor the commitment to reality.
Seating and lunch are limited at this Friday lunch event and RSVPs are required. To join send an email to rsvp@humanities.wisc.edu with your name and affiliation.
Claus Elholm Andersen is the Paul and Renate Madsen Assistant Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is currently finishing up a book-length project on Knausgård and the autofictional novel. His next project is about the intersection of form and politics in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytales.