The Wolves of Eternity

Praise

“[Knausgaard] brings to life—even celebrates—the complex and ambivalent give-and-take between men, between women and between men and women. These relationships, full of misunderstandings, concessions and reconciliations, feel real, without agenda . . . The Wolves of Eternity, like some 19th-century Russian novel, wrestles with the great contraries: the materialist view and the religious, the world as cosmic accident versus embodiment of some radiant intention. Is this world shot through with meaning or not? Has there ever been a better time to ask?” —Sven Birkerts, The New York Times Book Review

“Knausgaard is back, with a compulsively readable new novel . . . The good news, at least for hardcore Knausgaard fans, is that the second book in [his] series, The Wolves of Eternity, poses more questions than it answers . . . Knausgaard once again proves a thoughtful and wide reader. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Rilke are referenced alongside Marina Tsvetaeva, the poet who gives the book its title, and Nikolai Fyodorov, a pre-revolutionary Russian futurist who believed that all human effort should be directed toward resurrecting the dead . . . Knausgaard remains one of the great chroniclers of the moment-by-moment experience of life. Alevtina will be thinking deep thoughts about evolution one minute and contemplating meatballs the next. Knausgaard is acutely in tune with the simultaneity of life’s majesty and banality . . . Although the final shape of Knausgaard’s latest enterprise is not yet visible, there’s famously no smoke without wildfires. It’s likely something wicked this way comes.” —The Washington Post

“Not a conventional sequel . . . Revives fiction as an inquiry into the cosmos, re-enchanting the latter with those beguiling secrets science had stolen from it.” —The Guardian

“The range of subjects The Wolves of Eternity explores is fascinating, but the elements of the novel that gave me the most joy were also the most prosaic . . . Perhaps I’ll be in the minority to say it, but I wanted The Wolves of Eternity to be even longer.” —The Sunday Times

“There’s a greater power, I reckon, to be gleaned in the ordinariness of things . . . The less The Wolves of Eternity novel is about, the more it has to say.” —The Telegraph

“Knausgaard is a master . . . guiding us inexorably and irresistibly towards the next installment.” —Financial Times

“A marvelous and mysterious novel that will stay with readers long after Syvert and Alevtina take their leave of one another.” —Shelf Awareness

“A curiously affecting tale about science and spirit . . .” —Kirkus Reviews

“Inspired . . . Knausgaard’s book doesn’t shy away from big questions about the substance of his characters’ inner lives . . . [he] captures the spirit of a Russian novel.” —Publishers Weekly