The Morning Star
ABOUT
THE BOOK
One long night in August, Arne and Tove are staying with their children in their summer house in southern Norway. Kathrine, a priest, is flying home from a Bible seminar, questioning her marriage. Journalist Jostein is out drinking for the night, while his wife, Turid, a nurse at a psychiatric care unit, is on a nightshift when one of her patients escapes. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears blazing in the sky. Strange things start to happen as nine lives come together under the star. Hundreds of crabs amass on the road as Arne drives at night; Jostein receives a call about a death metal band found brutally murdered in a Satanic ritual; Kathrine conducts a funeral service for a man she met at the airport – but is he actually dead? The Morning Star is about life in all its mundanity and drama, the strangeness that permeates our world, and the darkness in us all. Karl Ove Knausgaard’s astonishing new novel goes to the utmost limits of freedom and chaos, to what happens when forces beyond our comprehension are unleashed, and the realms of the living and the dead collide.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Martin
Aitken
Martin Aitken’s translations of Scandinavian literature are numerous. His work has appeared on the shortlists of the DUBLIN Literary Award (2017) and the US Book Awards (2018), as well as the 2021 International Booker Prize. For his translation of Hanne Ørstavik’s Love he received the 2019 PEN America Translation Prize.
Martin Aitken’s translations of Scandinavian literature are numerous. His work has appeared on the shortlists of the DUBLIN Literary Award (2017) and the US Book Awards (2018), as well as the 2021 International Booker Prize. For his translation of Hanne Ørstavik’s Love he received the 2019 PEN America Translation Prize.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
The Morning Star is a staggering, ambitious work about the small and the grand things. We meet a colletion of people, loosely connected, who each get to tell their story. One night, in the middle of regular life, an enormous star appears in the sky. Nobody knows what it is, and after a little while things go back to normal. But not quite. – Solvberget Library and Culture Centre