Karl Ove Knausgård's ambitious Morning Star cycle continues to expand into what may become an even more substantial literary achievement than his celebrated six-volume autofictional work, My Struggle. The fourth instalment, The School of Night, deepens the author's exploration of supernatural existentialism within a universe where occult phenomena accompany the appearance of a brilliant new celestial body.
A Complex Web of Supernatural Mysteries
This gargantuan narrative presents an increasingly unsettling account of mysterious events triggered by the morning star's appearance. Readers familiar with the previous three volumes will recognise lingering questions: the unsolved murder of musicians in a forest, bizarre behaviour among local wildlife, and the curious absence of death in the world. Yet The School of Night introduces what might seem a more ordinary mystery—the identity of Kristian Hadeland.
Scattered references to Hadeland appeared throughout the saga's first two thousand pages. He was the sixty-seven-year-old man buried without mourners by doubting priest Kathrine Reinhardsen in The Morning Star (2021). Later, in The Third Realm (2024), he appeared as a sinister figure hitchhiking with Kathrine's husband after the supposedly deceased man she buried.
The Misanthropic Narrator's Dark Journey
The School of Night provides another perspective entirely. Here, Kristian Hadeland emerges as the author of a five-hundred-page suicide note and the deeply unpleasant narrator of a compellingly nasty novel. From a remote Norwegian island where he prepares to end his life, Kristian documents his story, beginning with his time as a photography student in mid-1980s London.
Young Kristian possesses technical skill and self-belief, though a visiting professor describes his photographs as "a bit dull. Without temperament." Shortly after arriving from Norway, he encounters two pivotal figures: enigmatic Dutch artist Hans, who works with artificial intelligence, and Vivian, who directs a production of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Kristian develops an uneasy friendship with the former and a hostile sexual relationship with the latter. His reflexive unpleasantness manifests through disdain for everyone from homeless people to elderly women wearing jeans, and even coffee with milk.
During a Christmas visit home, Kristian's antagonism extends to his family. After his sister overdoses, he overhears his father describing him as "a black hole … a narcissist, through and through." Outraged, he returns to London, retreating further into isolation. He cycles through rain-soaked cityscapes resembling graveyards, steals a dead cat from a veterinary clinic intending to photograph its skeleton, and—like many Knausgård protagonists—drinks heavily. Then a chance encounter with a homeless man sets Kristian on a path from near ruin to staggering success.
Faustian Bargains and Supernatural Interventions
The Doctor Faustus subplot serves both as literary model and interpretive lens. When a central crisis resolves through mysterious intervention by the Mephistophelean Hans, Kristian's photographic abilities undergo miraculous transformation. "Every photograph seemed incandescent, it was as if I was being carried forward by some momentous force," Kristian writes. Twenty-four years later, we find him finalising a retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Then his life and success begin to unravel.
Knausgård's admission that he barely plans or edits his work may concern existing readers and deter new ones. Each new Morning Star instalment contributes to a sense of creeping entropy rather than grand design, and how The School of Night fits the broader narrative remains unclear. The next two volumes, already published in Norway, apparently focus on the Løyning family first introduced in The Wolves of Eternity (2023). Whether chronological inconsistencies represent deliberate features of a superstructure beyond rational comprehension remains uncertain. How else could the protagonist of The School of Night be the man Kathrine buries in The Morning Star when their birth dates don't align?
Some readers will engage in kabbalistic interpretation, examining Danish Reddit threads, tracing Kristian's movements through Norwegian ferry schedules, and consulting classical literature to understand how the Faustus story illuminates Knausgård's universe. When Marlowe's Faustus asks Mephistopheles, "How comes it, then, that thou art out of hell?" and the demon replies, "Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it," the exchange perfectly describes the bleak reality Knausgård has created.
As in previous volumes, philosophical preoccupation with death remains constant, expressed through tension between instinctual materialism and the haunting possibility of something beyond comprehension. Kristian seems determined to ignore this tension, yet cannot explain Hans's strange agency in his life, particularly the Dutchman's sudden diabolical appearance at a pivotal moment: "Abruptly, he threw back his head and stared into the sky, the orbs in his sockets rolled white. Three times in quick succession his mouth opened and closed like a fish's." Attentive readers may recall the same convulsion affecting Jesper, the musician suspected of murdering his three bandmates in a satanic bloodbath, in the chilling conclusion of The Third Realm.
These supernatural intimations provide the saga with considerable momentum and uncanny frisson. Yet whether the mystery can sustain itself indefinitely remains uncertain. Some readers will find the journey challenging—Knausgård's prose varies from erratic to incoherent, and even admirers acknowledge his sentences aren't prized for their beauty. Furthermore, five hundred pages in Kristian's hateful company demands considerable endurance, while fully appreciating The School of Night requires thousands of pages of background reading.
Substantial expectations rest on Knausgård's ability to deliver on this sprawling epic's colossal promise. For readers possessing the stomach, patience, and faith to continue, this work of millenarian fiction remains utterly fascinating. The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgård, translated by Martin Aitken, is published by Harvill (£25).
