Has Karl Ove Knausgaard lost it?

Toward the end of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s newly translated novel, The School of Night, the much-feted, but now uninspired, photographer Kristian Hadeland is told by his wife that he need not work so hard. Could he not, she says, spend more time with his son? “We’ve plenty of money, and you’ve already created a lifework.” 

Knausgaard is now in a similar situation himself. He’s as rich as any novelist could reasonably hope to be. In fact, he might be considered famous, even outside literary circles. At a Prada-sponsored exhibition in central London that I visited last October — the kind of influencer-infested bash to which people don’t so much go to look at art as to be seen looking at art — they screened a