The second volume in his autobiographical quartet based on the
seasons, Winter is an achingly beautiful collection of daily
meditations and letters addressed directly to Knaugsaard's unborn
daughter
2 December - It is strange that you exist, but that you don't know
anything about what the world looks like. It's strange that there is a
first time to see the sky, a first time to see the sun, a first time to
feel the air against one's skin. It's strange that there is a first time
to see a face, a tree, a lamp, pajamas, a shoe. In my life it almost
never happens anymore. But soon it will. In just a few months, I will
see you for the first time.
In Winter, we rejoin the great Karl Ove Knausgaard as he waits for the
birth of his daughter. In preparation for her arrival, he takes stock of
the world, seeing it as if for the first time. In his inimitably
sensitive style, he writes about the moon, water, messiness, owls,
birthdays--to name just a handful of his subjects. These oh-so-familiar
objects and ideas he fills with new meaning, taking nothing for granted
or as given. New life is on the horizon, but the earth is also in
hibernation, waiting for the warmer weather to return, and so a
contradictory melancholy inflects his gaze.
Startling, compassionate, and exquisitely beautiful, Knausgaard's
writing is like nothing else. Somehow, he shows the world as it really
is, at once mundane and sublime.
