Wolves of Eternity - BOOKS.HCCP.ORG

English language

Published June 8, 2023 by Penguin Random House.

ISBN:: 9781787303362

(1 review)

The future is no more, and eternity has begun.

It's 1986 and a nuclear reactor has exploded in Chernobyl. Syvert Løyning returns home from military service to live with his mother and brother on the outskirts of a town in Southern Norway. One night, he dreams of his late father, and can't shake him from his mind. Searching through his father's belongings for clues and connections, he finds a cache of letters that lead to the Soviet Union.

In present-day Russia, Alevtina is trying to balance work and family. She has always sought the answers to life's big questions, but is preoccupied with care of her young son. Her friend Vasilisa offers some nourishment: she is writing a book about an ancient feature of Russian culture, the belief in eternal life. Meantime, Alevtina is heading towards a meeting that will redraw the contours of her world.

A searching and humane …

The future is no more, and eternity has begun.

It's 1986 and a nuclear reactor has exploded in Chernobyl. Syvert Løyning returns home from military service to live with his mother and brother on the outskirts of a town in Southern Norway. One night, he dreams of his late father, and can't shake him from his mind. Searching through his father's belongings for clues and connections, he finds a cache of letters that lead to the Soviet Union.

In present-day Russia, Alevtina is trying to balance work and family. She has always sought the answers to life's big questions, but is preoccupied with care of her young son. Her friend Vasilisa offers some nourishment: she is writing a book about an ancient feature of Russian culture, the belief in eternal life. Meantime, Alevtina is heading towards a meeting that will redraw the contours of her world.

A searching and humane novel, The Wolves of Eternity is an intimate journey into the experiences of a half-brother and half-sister in their two different - yet deeply connected - lives. The second novel in Karl Ove Knausgaard's extraordinary new series, it expands the universe of The Morning Star in the decades before the blazing and mysterious star descends.

3 editions

logan williams reviewed Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Less melodramatic than The Morning Star

4 stars

like The Morning Star, there was one character here who felt straight out of My Struggle (Syvert). The novel dwells in his perspective most of the time, which was at first felt revelatory, and then began to drag solipsistically... just like The Morning Star and My Struggle. I think the first Syvert section could have been edited down to 1/2 or 1/3 of its 400 pages without losing much. But Knausgaard has always been a bit Proustian.

The middle half was wonderful, a subplot straight from Richard Power's The Overstory with the thrilling conclusion of an essay on immortality and Russian cosmism. A little too cute with tying the different narratives together, but this is often the case. (Certainly in The Overstory too!)