You’re Not a Real Writer Until You Have Enemies: The Millions Interviews Karl Ove Knausgaard

“Many writers are very bad communicators in life, but they are great writers. The writers I know are fucked, wrecked, destroyed: Not all of them are aware of it themselves,” Karl Ove Knausgaard says, over a mid-afternoon glass of water at an Auckland hotel. Not just Scandinavian writers? “No, there’s a lot of fucked up people all around the world.”

Despite the unrelenting detail of his 3,600 page “indiscreet” memoir , Knausgaard has a rep for being less than forthcoming in conversation. The “existential loner hero with four children,” said, has “many contradictions.” “I tried desperately to think of something to say. We had to have something in common,” his awkward lunch’s home. “But no, I couldn’t come up with a single topic of ­conversation.”