the complete review - fiction
My Struggle: Book One
(A Death in the Family)
by
Karl Ove Knausgaard
[general information](#basic) | [review summaries](#summaries) | [our review](#ours) | [links](#links) | [about the author](#author)
| Title: | My Struggle |
|---|---|
| Author: | Karl Ove Knausgaard |
| Genre: | Novel |
| Written: | 2009 (Eng. 2012) |
| Length: | 471 pages |
| Original in: | Norwegian |
| Availability: | My Struggle - US |
| A Death in the Family - UK | |
| My Struggle - Canada | |
| A Death in the Family - India | |
| La mort d'un père - France | |
| Sterben - Deutschland | |
| La mia lotta - Italia | |
| La muerte del padre - España |
- Norwegian title: Min Kamp
- US title: My Struggle: Book One
- UK title: A Death in the Family
- Translated by Don Bartlett
- Return to of the page -
Our Assessment:
My Struggle: Book One (Norwegian: Min Kamp) is a 471-page novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Don Bartlett. The work is presented as a personal, near-documentary account of the author's youth and the death of his father, drawing comparisons to Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
The narrative is divided into two main sections: the first focuses on a New Year's Eve celebration and the author's teenage circumstances; the second centers on his father's death in 1998 and the subsequent cleaning of the family home. The book is the first installment of a planned six-volume epic.
Reviews are mixed, with The Independent awarding an A and The Guardian a D. Critics praise the detailed, Proustian examination of the past and the translation, though some, like New Humanist, criticize the work for being overly mundane and soporific.