The School of Night
Will be published approx. on 6. August 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
512 pages
978-1-5299-6749-4 (ISBN)
Description
'A damned masterpiece' Sunday Times
'An almost dangerously immersive reading experience that will completely take over your life... utterly captivating' Martin MacInnes, Booker longlisted author of IN ASCENSION
London. 1985. A city rife with possibility and desire. One young man who wants it all.
Kristian Hadeland, newly arrived in the city, seethes with ambition and contempt. His family in Norway never understood him; his fellow photography students bore him. But he knows he and his art are destined for more.
Then he meets Hans, an eccentric Dutch artist. With Hans, the future Kristian yearns for is tangible. All art is possible. Any line can be crossed.
But success comes at a price. And when Kristian does the unthinkable, will he be prepared to pay it?
Electrifying and unflinching, The School of Night is a singular novel about artistic creation and human corruption. It is the story of one terrible man's rise and fall, and a reckoning with the darkest parts of human nature.
'Addictive and eerie' Guardian
'Engrossing, dark and amusing' Rachel Kushner, Booker shortlisted author of CREATION LAKE
'Mysterious, unsettling, thought provoking, unpredictable and darkly entertaining' Colin Barrett, Booker longlisted author of WILD HOUSES
'Dark and precise about the underside of human desire and connection. . . painfully funny' Megan Nolan, author of ACTS OF DESPERATION
PRAISE FOR KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD:
'Absorbs you utterly' Sunday Times
'One of the most genuinely suspenseful, alluring books I've ever read' Brandon Taylor
'Addictive' Daily Telegraph
'Brilliant storytelling . . . Epic' Independent
'Strikingly humane, unsettling, and wholly unique' Ferdia Lennon
'As accessible and creepy as anything by Stephen King and as addictive as your favourite TV drama' Spectator
'One of my literary heroes' Torrey Peters
'Knausgaard is among the finest writers alive' New York Times
'An almost dangerously immersive reading experience that will completely take over your life... utterly captivating' Martin MacInnes, Booker longlisted author of IN ASCENSION
London. 1985. A city rife with possibility and desire. One young man who wants it all.
Kristian Hadeland, newly arrived in the city, seethes with ambition and contempt. His family in Norway never understood him; his fellow photography students bore him. But he knows he and his art are destined for more.
Then he meets Hans, an eccentric Dutch artist. With Hans, the future Kristian yearns for is tangible. All art is possible. Any line can be crossed.
But success comes at a price. And when Kristian does the unthinkable, will he be prepared to pay it?
Electrifying and unflinching, The School of Night is a singular novel about artistic creation and human corruption. It is the story of one terrible man's rise and fall, and a reckoning with the darkest parts of human nature.
'Addictive and eerie' Guardian
'Engrossing, dark and amusing' Rachel Kushner, Booker shortlisted author of CREATION LAKE
'Mysterious, unsettling, thought provoking, unpredictable and darkly entertaining' Colin Barrett, Booker longlisted author of WILD HOUSES
'Dark and precise about the underside of human desire and connection. . . painfully funny' Megan Nolan, author of ACTS OF DESPERATION
PRAISE FOR KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD:
'Absorbs you utterly' Sunday Times
'One of the most genuinely suspenseful, alluring books I've ever read' Brandon Taylor
'Addictive' Daily Telegraph
'Brilliant storytelling . . . Epic' Independent
'Strikingly humane, unsettling, and wholly unique' Ferdia Lennon
'As accessible and creepy as anything by Stephen King and as addictive as your favourite TV drama' Spectator
'One of my literary heroes' Torrey Peters
'Knausgaard is among the finest writers alive' New York Times
Reviews / Votes
Inspired...a damned masterpiece * The Times * There is nothing in contemporary publishing to remotely compare to Knausgaard's Morning Star series. Knausgaard has always been brilliant on families and the domestic, on the minutiae of the everyday and the quiet, lonely rituals and habits of personality. But in combining this with elements of genre and even pulp fiction - crime-thriller, horror and the occult - he has unleashed something entirely new, an antic and almost dangerously immersive reading experience that will completely take over your life. There is something obliterative about its intensity; I read hundreds of pages on a bus journey in slow-moving traffic, completely oblivious to everything around me.The first of the series set in London, The School of Night is by turns bleak, funny and horrifying, but never less than utterly captivating. Knausgaard seems to have struck on an endlessly generative seam, resulting in an almost deranged hypergraphia, and there appears no limit to where he may take us next. -- Martin MacInnes, Booker longlisted author of IN ASCENSION Knausgaard has surpassed even his phenomenally high standards with his latest novel. This dark and macabre offering is incredibly addictive... an intense but hugely rewarding read * Daily Mirror * Ingenious...engrossing...a remarkable addition to an exciting and disturbing series * Publishers Weekly * Sinister and surreal...A parable of ambition , told with epic heft - and a decent place to start if you've been curious about this writer but never read yet him . * Daily Mail * An addictive and eerie reading experience * Guardian * The School Of Night is another startling, gripping entry in Karl Ove Knausgaard's Morning Star series. I love spending time in this ripe, mysterious, unsettling, thought provoking, unpredictable and darkly entertaining world Knausgaard is in the process of creating. -- Colin Barrett, Booker longlisted author of WILD HOUSES The School of NIght is a good place to start for anyone who hasn't read Knausgaard before * NRK * Karl Ove Knausgaard is one of my literary heroes -- Torrey Peters A deeply strange, polyphonic gothic novel with echoes of Bram Stoker. . . conjures a fictive world that is at once strikingly humane, unsettling, and wholly unique -- Ferdia Lennon on THE THIRD REALM
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
500 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5299-6749-4 (9781529967494)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
11/2025
Vintage Digital
€16.99
Available for download
Persons
Karl Ove Knausgaard (Author)
Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle cycle has been heralded as a masterpiece all over the world. From A Death in the Family to The End, the novels move through childhood into adulthood and, together, form an enthralling portrait of human life. Knausgaard has been awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature, the Brage Prize and the Jerusalem Prize. His work, which also includes the Seasons Quartet and the Morning Star sequence (The Morning Star, The Wolves of Eternity, The Third Realm and The School of Night) is published in thirty-six languages.
Martin Aitken (Translator)
Martin Aitken's translations of Scandinavian fiction are widely published. His work has appeared on the shortlists of the International Booker Prize, the Dublin Literary Award and the US National Book Awards, among other prizes. He received the PEN America Translation Prize in 2019 and, for the first book in the Morning Star cycle, the US National Translation Award in Prose in 2022. He lives in Denmark
Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle cycle has been heralded as a masterpiece all over the world. From A Death in the Family to The End, the novels move through childhood into adulthood and, together, form an enthralling portrait of human life. Knausgaard has been awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature, the Brage Prize and the Jerusalem Prize. His work, which also includes the Seasons Quartet and the Morning Star sequence (The Morning Star, The Wolves of Eternity, The Third Realm and The School of Night) is published in thirty-six languages.
Martin Aitken (Translator)
Martin Aitken's translations of Scandinavian fiction are widely published. His work has appeared on the shortlists of the International Booker Prize, the Dublin Literary Award and the US National Book Awards, among other prizes. He received the PEN America Translation Prize in 2019 and, for the first book in the Morning Star cycle, the US National Translation Award in Prose in 2022. He lives in Denmark