Karl Ove Knausgaard

Knausgaard grew up on the island of Tromøya in southern Norway; his father, a teacher, descended into alcoholism after the parents' divorce and was found dead amid squalor when Knausgaard was in his twenties, a death that became the opening volume of his six-book autobiographical novel. He studied at Bergen's celebrated Academy of Creative Writing and made an early reputation with Out of the World, the first novel by a Norwegian to win the country's Critics Prize.

My Struggle (2009–2011), its title a deliberate provocation borrowed from Hitler, recorded his own daily life, marriage, fatherhood, and grief in six volumes of almost total, unfiltered candor, including intimate details of his family that caused public rifts, with an uncle threatening legal action and his second wife's struggles with bipolar disorder laid bare on the page. The books became an unlikely international sensation, credited with reviving interest in the long, closely observed autobiographical novel.