“School of Night” is the newest (fourth) novel in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Morning Star series.A distinctive feature of this series is that all its books belong to the genre-fiction category. They are supernatural tales told through the perspectives of multiple characters.
In The School of Night, for the first time in this series, Knausgaard presents a full-length story through the eyes of a single character — something he hasn’t attempted since his debut novel A Time for Everything. This novel is among the strongest works in the series. Yet, given the many mixed opinions about the series as a whole, even calling it “one of the best” feels a bit of an overstatement.
At the center of the novel is the play Doctor Faustus — and similar events unfold in the life of the protagonist (a character who makes a pact with the devil and rises to success). Readers familiar with Knausgaard’s two recent essays — on Dostoevsky and on AI — will recognize their echoes in this novel. There’s also a faint thread of Crime and Punishment running through it.
However, unlike the other novels, there are no major supernatural elements here (just a few moments in certain sections). In truth, a question lingers: where exactly is this series heading? Knausgaard seems to be turning whatever preoccupies him at the time of writing into novels.
The Wolves of Eternity wasn’t as intense as The Morning Star (though it’s the book most ordinary readers seem to prefer; for me, it didn’t entirely work). Personally, I liked The Third Realm more — it stood out for its writing and vivid characters.
In School of Night, the protagonist is morally shaded — a man with a negative streak — but the tragedy he faces is rendered with gut-wrenching force. Still, in the context of the series, this novel feels like an afterthought. Many readers aware of Knausgaard’s extraordinary gift might wish this had been a stand-alone novel.
His command of photography and art shines here too — you can sense his experience organizing the Munch exhibition, his knowledge of painting and photography. In this way, Knausgaard continues to record his own life — as he did in My Struggle — yet The School of Night remains, by and large, a fully fictional novel.