Karl Ove Knausgaard鈥檚 latest novel cycle began with The Morning Star, followed by The Wolves of Eternity, and continues with . These are books of epic ideas; a pithy summary is difficult. The characters are mostly from a town in southern Norway, and shining down on them is a star 鈥� an unexplained object that just appears.
I read Knausgaard鈥檚 books compulsively, as soon as I get my hands on them. They are concerned with meaning 鈥� of modern life and of reality. He isn鈥檛 anti-science, but he draws attention to the limits of its explanatory power: in the fuzzy bits, where knowledge runs out, lurk the deepest questions, and this is why I find his books so fascinating.
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What happens, for example, at the border between life and death? In this new work, we hear about Russian philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, who argued for using science to resurrect the dead. By coincidence, Fyodorov also features in the new Richard Powers novel, Playground (see 鈥淩ichard Powers鈥檚 new novel is a beautiful love letter to our oceans鈥�).
