Knausgaard’s My Struggle: A reading guide

6 years. 6 volumes. 1,371,255 words, 3,770 pages.

3 children, 2 marriages, 1 life-defining death.

212.5 coffees drunk, 217 cigarettes smoked.

Since A Death in the Family was first published in English in 2012, we’ve spent over 125 hours* reading My Struggle. We’ve followed Karl Ove through childhood into adulthood, through first love and heartbreak, through becoming a father, becoming a writer, through the highs and lows of life.

And we haven’t been able to stop. The End is a masterpiece, bringing the whole series into sharp focus as Knausgaard looks back on how his writing about an ordinary life became one of the most extraordinary literary projects of our times.

* That’s nearly five days straight, assuming you read 30 pages an hour…