A Man in Love

My Struggle, Book 2

By: Karl Ove Knausgaard, Don Bartlett - translator

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

In the second installment of Karl Ove Knausgaard's monumental six-volume masterpiece, the character Karl Ove Knausgaard moves to Stockholm, where, having left his wife, he leads a solitary existence. He strikes up a deep friendship with another exiled Norwegian, a Nietzschean intellectual and boxing fanatic named Geir. He also tracks down Linda, whom he met at a writers' workshop a few years earlier and who fascinated him deeply.

My Struggle, book two, is at heart a love story - the story of Karl Ove falling in love with his second wife. But the novel also tells other stories: of becoming a father, of the turbulence of family life, of outrageously unsuccessful attempts at a family vacation, of the emotional strain of birthday parties for children, and of the daily frustrations, rhythms, and distractions of city life keeping him from (and filling) his novel. It is a brilliant work that emphatically delivers on the unlikely promise that hundreds of minutes later, listeners will be left breathlessly demanding more.

©2014 Karl Ove Knausgaard (P)2015 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"[Book two] sears the reader because Knausgaard is a passionate idealist [who] wants to fight the conformity and homogeneity of modern bourgeois existence." (James Wood, The New Yorker)

i just cant get enough

the narrators voice is like candy to my ears and the story flows along beautifully like a stream. karl ove writes the simple in such a beautiful way

The best book I listen in the last 10 years

Karl Ove talks about normal life. Struggles with family, kids, relationships in a way that does not make me tire and that I miss it when the book is over. Wow!!! Thanks Karl is so difficult to find writers like you.

Do you like annoying neighbor stories?

This was a slog to get through. The first book ⚡️🎸rocked⚡️🎸 this one was a more tedious depiction of life with an annoying Russian neighbor and excruciating stories about his kids.

At the end he sees a hedgehog and there is a neat passage about a train plowing through a snowy woods tho.

Beautiful writing about a very human human.

It leaves you with a mix of feelings, like any good novel should. I abhor much of his character, and understand him at the same time. It is the complexity of a human, and the endless griding struggle of existance, and the vaguaries of life, and I am quite enjoying this experience, amd will certainly continue onward into his writings. Also, he's got me sold on wishing to move to Sweden.

could not stop listening to every word spoken.

the story is powerful and painfully honest, the narration is superb, the entire experience is unforgettable journey