A Time for Everything

by Karl Ove Knausgaard, James Anderson (Translator)

Overview

“The writing glows with an intense awareness of the here and now, and loving observations of landscapes and objects...this is an extraordinary novel, and completely original.”—The Independent

“The most original and promising Norwegian writer of his generation.”—Adresseavisen

“Knausgaard joins the ranks of the greatest storytellers of our time.”—Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Antinous Bellori, a boy of eleven, loses his way in the woods in the mountains behind his home. Unseen, he stumbles upon two glowing beings, an event that leads him to devote the rest of his life to the study of angels. Bellori reinterprets moments throughout the Bible where men confront angels: the expulsion from the garden, Cain and Abel, Lot in Sodom, Noah’s isolation before the flood, Ezekiel’s visions. . . . Through his profound glimpses, Karl Knausgaard—an extraordinary storyteller and thinker—explores with spellbinding insight how the nature and roles of these intermediaries between man and the divine have shifted throughout history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780981987354
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	11/20/2009
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	499
File size:	564 KB

About the Author

Karl Knausgaard, born in Norway in 1968. "A Time for Everything," his second novel, was nominated for the Nordic Council Prize and is his first to be translated into English. In 2006, "Dagbladet" (a major Norwegian newspaper) named "A Time for Everything" one of the best 25 books of the last 25 years.

Read an Excerpt

Antinous had been born in 1551 at Ardo, a small mountain town in the far north of Italy, where in all likelihood he remained until he began to study in 1565. Apart from one particular event, to which he was to return time after time for the rest of his life, little is known about his early years. The names of his parents and native town do not figure anywhere in Antinous’s writings, and, as they are otherwise characterized by a large amount of biographical detail, this early obscurity has aroused the curiosity of many readers. But if one is to attempt to understand Antinous, it isn’t to the inner man one must turn.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for A Time for Everything:
 
“A marvelous book . . . Knausgaard’s most evident strength as a writer is his gift for minute description, especially of nature, but also of the human psyche . . . The descriptions of forests, floods, streams, fields, and Henrik Vankel’s secluded island are ravishing and . . . create the feeling that we are being transported, again and again, into some primordial world.”
—Ingrid D. Rowland, The New York Review of Books
 
“The writing glows with an intense awareness of the here and now, and loving observations of landscapes and objects . . . this is an extraordinary novel, and completely original.”
—The Independent

Praise for My Struggle:
 
“This deserves to be called perhaps the most significant literary enterprise of our times.”
—Rachel Cusk, The Guardian

“Knausgaard's command of the traditional novelistic procedure is the reason these books are the opposite of dull, though on the face of it they should be. Knausgaard is always spinning a tale, always drawing the reader along with some romantic entanglement, sexual disaster, or emotional crisis. He feeds in atmosphere in just the right amounts; his pacing is flawless. How wonderful to read an experimental novel that fires every nerve ending while summoning in the reader the sheer sense of how amazing it is to be alive, on this planet and no other.”
—Jeffrey Eugenides, The New York Times Book Review

“What’s notable is Karl Ove’s ability, rare these days, to be fully present in and mindful of his own existence. Every detail is put down without apparent vanity or decoration, as if the writing and the living are happening simultaneously. There shouldn’t be anything remarkable about any of it except for the fact that it immerses you totally. You live his life with him.”
—Zadie Smith, The New York Review of Books

From the Publisher