The fifth installment of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Morning Star series is an introspective “deep cut” that trades the thriller-like suspense of The School of Night for a haunting, probing exploration of the heart in conflict with itself. Set in the mid-1970s, Arendal is a prequel to The Wolves of Eternity, following Syvert’s father as he navigates a landscape defined by literal and metaphorical darkness. While it may not be a “hit single,” this slower, denser atmospheric meditation on whether to remain devoted to family or to follow the heart is destined to be appreciated by devoted readers.
The opening line of the Acknowledgments says even novels about lonely men in nearly empty cities are needed, maybe even especially needed, and it will be interesting to see if readers agree after this installment comes out in English (in the UK on November 5, 2026). It’s the fifth book in The Morning Star series, and like the fourth, The School of Night, it can be read on its own but would be deepened of course if read in the context of the others, especially the second volume, The Wolves of Eternity, which features Syvert, the son of this one’s narrator (also named Syvert), and Asja, the Russian lover of Arendal’s narrator (Asja’s daughter features in Wolves). Like The School of Night, this is a “backstory book,” set in the past and with a single narrator, another line along the periphery of a possible pentacle-like star structure (see my review of The Third Realm for elaboration and textual reference/support related to what I believe may be the overall structure of the series).
Generally, although I don’t expect this installment to generate the same interest and excitement as The School of Night, it definitely adds a welcome, more internal texture to the series. It’s essentially a love story, a story of longing, a subtly wrenching story of the heart in conflict with itself (per Faulkner), but at the same time it doesn’t feel sappy at all, probably because it’s so icy, so dark (literally, it feels like it all takes place at night or otherwise during the day blinded by snow so bright it may as well be darkness), and for the most part solitary, even when among people. It mostly takes place on an iced-over island, and it feels that way.
It’s a cold novel, with a lot going on beneath it out of sight, a novel that extends the series another ten years back in time from the mid-’80s of Wolves and The School of Night, an intriguing addition but not one that I expect most readers will really jump up and down about. If The School of Night was the series’s radio hit, this one is a deep cut, destined for appreciation by KOK heads, those really into the series and the author.
It’s a slower, more internal “cold winter’s night” novel about love, longing, loss, indecision, mystery, not knowing, nosing one’s way slowly but surely toward something, not quite ever sure. At times toward the end it seems like a novel about alcoholism, as though KOK is envisioning his father, putting himself in his father’s shoes, method-acting his way into his history, and similarly, there’s something that feels like an oblique representation of the author’s own experience with leaving his second wife Linda and taking up with another woman in another country. The author’s biography, more than with other writers, generally warps the light of interpretation for obvious reasons. That is, writing in first person, it’s difficult not to feel KOK right there behind his narrator’s mask in this one.
Compared with The School of Night, which was propelled by suspense, almost like a thriller at times, this one has no real engine other than wondering when/if his death will occur (from Wolves, we know his car was found in the water near Arendal), at least at first, before it becomes more about his decision to stay with Evelyn and the boys or leave them for Asja. Other intriguing semi-murky mysteries are in play but almost like their purpose is to externalize the narrator’s sense of confusion — they don’t seem like red herrings really or anything actually solvable. There’s also the narrator’s uncanny extreme sense of deja vu, and at one point a memory of a dream from his youth, I believe, involving the same eerie sound that appeared in the first volume, something like krikkriklatta (I’ll have to page through the ebook to find it).
It’s set in the mid-’70s, mostly in a small coastal town in the middle of winter, after Syvert is forced to spend some time there after his car breaks down outside of town. He spent summers there as a child and his mother still lives there. He runs into an old friend, Bodil, who informs him that their childhood friend Lars recently died of cancer. They have a few drinks, argue a little, say goodnight, Syvert returns to his hotel, reads letters from Asja, gets antsy and walks around town, hits a few bars, sees a weird young guy with long dark hair in a long black coat with a guitar case, a mysterious guy reminiscent of the figure of the devil in first photograph discussed in The School of Night. A Norwegian oil tanker has also gone missing. But mostly Syvert is conflicted, longing for Asja but also feels like his place is with his family, with his wife Evelyn and his two young sons.
I read this slowly over several months so the chronology in the previous paragraph and what follows may not be exactly accurate, but generally, from what I remember, that night staying over in Arendal he drives around, visits his parents briefly, then drives out on the thick ice, ultimately making his way to a church where there’s a middle-of-the-night service for those in grief, who have recently lost loved ones. At this point, more than halfway, maybe two thirds through, it feels like the climax of the novel — this eerie, evocative, extraordinary image of driving drunk in the middle of the night out over the iced-over fjord or whatever to this church, encountering this semi-implausible yet engaging session where the mysterious guitarist appears and Syvert takes in a sermon-like talk about the omnipresence of souls all around.
Thematically, all this fits with the overall series, which KOK could’ve called Life and Death, echoing War and Peace, the series itself ultimately most likely outnumbering Tolstoy’s epic in terms of page count several times over. The next day Syvert learns that his car needs a new engine and it won’t be ready for a while. He gets a sweet loaner (BMW) and heads home, where he reintegrates into the domestic situation, his forehead bruised from a fall in one of the bars he’d visited in Arendal, his plucky young son Syvert off playing indoor soccer or out with some friends, his younger son Joar seeing strange men in the house. There’s a dinner party with a couple, old friends, who come over and Syvert gets housed on vodka he hides in the basement, blasts Wagner on the hi-fi, says a lot he shouldn’t say, including that he longs for true love, something along those lines, and then he returns to Arendal to retrieve his repaired car, and visits Bodil, his old friend, talks with her, drinks some bad coffee, checks out their farm animals, nearly hooks up with her, reveals his situation with Asja, receives advice from Bodil that he only has one life to live and he should follow his heart. He returns to Arendal, vacillates a ton, and then calls Asja in Russia. The end.
That’s the general gist of the novel, more or less what happens, I’m sure I’m missing a few things of course since I started reading this on the last day of August and finished on the first of February, managing a percentage in the Norwegian ebook per sitting, at least that was the goal, about five pages at a time, until the final 20% or so when I committed to it, reading a few percentages every day.
It’s not nearly as long as The School of Night but it’s denser, at least before it opens up somewhat with easy dialogue-replete scenes, and although shorter than the others it feels slower and more internal. It hovered along at what seemed like a lower gear for the author through the first half but became more interesting, with the surprising, magnificent image of driving drunk out on the ice in the middle of the night, and then the scene at the church providing serious thematic support relevant to the series overall, which I’ll immediately continue — downloaded the next installment, Jeg var lenge død. I intend to read it at a committed pace, as my primary book, not intermixed with several others as I did with this one and The School of Night, so I can finish in early spring instead of in late summer or fall, and then read someone other than Knausgaard (maybe even read something in English).
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Note: the image at the top of the screen is a painting by Mamma Andersson, whose work is on the cover of the Norwegian edition of Arendal.
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Fulfill all your Knausgaard needs with the following posts:
Knausgaard’s The School of Night: This May Be the Place
The Wolves of Eternity: Prequel to an Infinite Arc
The Seasons Quartet by Karl Ove Knausgaard
The Complete My Struggle Series by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Angels & Demons at Play: A Time for Everything by Karl Ove Knausgaard
October Child by Linda Boström Knausgaard, translated by Saskia Vogel (scroll about a quarter of the way down the page)
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To support the publishers who have supported my writing, please acquire a copy of Like It Matters, Chaotic Good, Neutral Evil ))), and/or JRZDVLZ (all from Sagging Meniscus). Or my translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador (from New Directions). Or Thanks + Sorry + Good Luck: Rejection Letters From the Eyeshot Outbox (from Barrelhouse). Or The Shimmering Go-Between from me (Atticus, the publisher, is kaput).
