--- title: Karl Ove Knausgaard on How He Writes and Taboo Subjects description: The Norwegian author of 'My Struggle' talks about the divide between fact and fiction, upsetting his subjects and the spread of gun violence canonical: https://time.com/4103553/knausgaard-my-struggle-interview/ author: Sarah Begley article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-11-09T22:32:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-30T11:54:36.221Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Karl Ove Knausgaard on How He Writes and Taboo Subjects og:description: The Norwegian author of 'My Struggle' talks about fact and fiction og:url: https://time.com/4103553/knausgaard-my-struggle-interview/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt822690b90d8b594c/69887008ab6d773be36a7085/karl-ove-knausgaard-still-02.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Karl Ove Knausgaard Still 02 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Karl Ove Knausgaard on How He Writes and Taboo Subjects twitter:description: The Norwegian author of 'My Struggle' talks about fact and fiction twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt822690b90d8b594c/69887008ab6d773be36a7085/karl-ove-knausgaard-still-02.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Karl Ove Knausgaard on Writing About Real People: 'I Can't Really Do It Anymore' by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) and [Francesca Trianni](https://time.com/author/francesca-trianni/) Nov 9, 2015 10:32 PM UTC  by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) and [Francesca Trianni](https://time.com/author/francesca-trianni/) Nov 9, 2015 10:32 PM UTC Many writers infuse bits of themselves, their family and friends into their work, but Karl Ove Knausgaard’s books are unusually personal. His 6-volume autobiographical novel _My Struggle_ (Hitler reference intentional) documents everything in his life from childhood through marriage; its emotional honesty down to the most mundane events has won over many in the international literary community—even while upsetting some of the relatives whose likenesses appear on the page. The backlash to personal descriptions has made Knausgaard a little warier. “If it’s personal, if some person’s involved, I can’t really do it anymore,” he tells TIME. “I did it in those six books and then I stopped doing it. It’s so hard.” But he still can’t quite put the practice to rest: “I have this project now, I write short texts, and in them I have some portraits of friends. The thing is I write one page about them, and that should be the essence of them, how I see them, and even though if I’m not revealing anything, it still is shocking to them, and they could be angry, or upset about it. And I thought, ‘Why? Why am I going there again?’ But it still is _maybe_ a duty of a writer. Maybe it’s not, maybe it’s immoral, maybe it’s bad, I don’t know … If you write about someone, you’re taking something away from them. It’s a robbery. And you can’t get away from that.” Knausgaard may have fraught feelings about straddling the border between fiction and non-fiction, but it’s an area he can’t seem to escape—and one that he points out has been well-trod by novels as far back as _Don Quixote_. “The whole book is about the difference between literature and life,” he says. “It’s not outdated. It’s kind of the core in literature, the division between writing and the world.” Bridging distances like that are of particular interest to Knausgaard, and not only on the page. For instance, he’s written about the lone-wolf terrorist Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011, an event he relates to the gun violence plaguing the US. “I think it’s the same mechanism, same psychology as the school shootings in America and other places. The only thing that’s different is the context, and the reasons that Breivik made for himself. And there was another incident, a man in Sweden killing two people with a sword, and then he was killed himself. That has never happened before, either. So it’s like a virus—it’s spreading.” “All these things are only possible with distance,” he says. “You can’t kill someone if he or she is close to you—that’s impossible. You could do it if in a rage, maybe, but rage is distance, you know? And those people who are going to school, gunning them down—the distance is huge. It’s like they’re on computer games or whatever. And it’s the same in the army: they train people to get that distance, so you can’t see the other in the one you kill. Literature is the opposite. Literature is the place where the other comes to you.” “I don’t think you can give books to kids and they will not do this,” Knausgaard says. “But it is a principle there that’s very important.” The fifth volume of [_My Struggle_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0914671391/?tag=timecom-20) will appear in English in April 2016. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4103553/knausgaard-my-struggle-interview/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4103553/knausgaard-my-struggle-interview/"},"headline":"Karl Ove Knausgaard on Writing About Real People: 'I Can't Really Do It Anymore'","datePublished":"2015-11-09T22:32:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-30T11:54:36.221Z","description":"The Norwegian author of My Struggle talks about the divide between fact and fiction, upsetting his subjects and the spread of gun violence","url":"https://time.com/4103553/knausgaard-my-struggle-interview/","keywords":["Books"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt822690b90d8b594c/69887008ab6d773be36a7085/karl-ove-knausgaard-still-02.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sarah Begley","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/"},{"@type":"Person","name":"Francesca Trianni","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/francesca-trianni/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt822690b90d8b594c/69887008ab6d773be36a7085/karl-ove-knausgaard-still-02.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Karl Ove Knausgaard Still 02","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4103553/knausgaard-my-struggle-interview/","name":"Karl Ove Knausgaard on Writing About Real People: 'I Can't Really Do It Anymore'"}}]}] ```