The Wolves of Eternity Audiobook By Karl Ove Knausgaard, Martin Aitken - translator cover art

The Wolves of Eternity

A Novel

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The Wolves of Eternity

By: Karl Ove Knausgaard, Martin Aitken - translator
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Vas Eli, Natasha Soudek, Gilli Messer
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The transporting, standalone continuation of the acclaimed, apocalyptically-charged novel The Morning Star—the second in a bold new series.

In 1986, twenty-year-old Syvert Løyning returns from the military to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One evening, his dead father comes to him in a dream. Realizing that he doesn’t really know who his father was, Syvert begins to investigate his life and finds clues pointing to the Soviet Union. What he learns changes his past and undermines the entire notion of who he is. But when his mother becomes ill, and he must care for his little brother, Joar, on his own, he no longer has time or space for lofty speculations.
In present-day Russia, Alevtina Kotov, a biologist working at Moscow University, is traveling with her young son to the home of her stepfather, to celebrate his eightieth birthday. As a student, Alevtina was bright, curious and ambitious, asking the big questions about life and human consciousness. But as she approaches middle-age, most of that drive has gone, and she finds herself in a place she doesn’t want to be, without really understanding how she got there. Her stepfather, a musician, raised her as his own daughter, and she was never interested in learning about her biological father; when she finally starts looking into him, she learns that he died many years ago and left two sons, Joar and Syvert.
Years later, when Syvert and Alevtina meet in Moscow, two very different approaches to life emerge. And as a bright star appears in the sky, it illuminates the wonder of human existence and the mysteries that exist beyond our own worldview. Set against the political and cultural backdrop of both the 1980s and the present day, The Wolves of Eternity is an expansive and affecting book about relations—to one another, to nature, to the dead.
Literary Fiction Metaphysical & Visionary Russia Metaphysical Fiction Genre Fiction Horror Scary

Critic reviews

“[Knausgaard] brings to life—even celebrates—the complex and ambivalent give-and-take between men, between women and between men and women. These relationships, full of misunderstandings, concessions and reconciliations, feel real, without agenda . . . The Wolves of Eternity, like some 19th-century Russian novel, wrestles with the great contraries: the materialist view and the religious, the world as cosmic accident versus embodiment of some radiant intention. Is this world shot through with meaning or not? Has there ever been a better time to ask?” —Sven Birkerts, The New York Times Book Review

“Knausgaard is back, with a compulsively readable new novel. . . . Knausgaard remains one of the great chroniclers of the moment-by-moment experience of life. . . . [He] is acutely in tune with the simultaneity of life’s majesty and banality . . . Although the final shape of Knausgaard’s latest enterprise is not yet visible, there’s famously no smoke without wildfires. It’s likely something wicked this way comes.” The Washington Post

“Knausgaard is a master . . . guiding us inexorably and irresistibly towards the next installment.” —Financial Times

“Not a conventional sequel . . . Revives fiction as an inquiry into the cosmos, re-enchanting the latter with those beguiling secrets science had stolen from it.” The Guardian

“Eerie. . . . The range of subjects The Wolves of Eternity explores is fascinating, but the elements of the novel that gave me the most joy were also the most prosaic. . . . Perhaps I’ll be in the minority to say it, but I wanted The Wolves of Eternity to be even longer.” The Sunday Times (UK)

“There’s a greater power, I reckon, to be gleaned in the ordinariness of things. . . . The less The Wolves of Eternity novel is about, the more it has to say.” The Telegraph

“A marvelous and mysterious novel that will stay with readers long after Syvert and Alevtina take their leave of one another.” Shelf Awareness

“Inspired . . . Knausgaard’s book doesn’t shy away from big questions about the substance of his characters’ inner lives . . . [he] captures the spirit of a Russian novel.” —Publishers Weekly

“A curiously affecting tale about science and spirit.” Kirkus Reviews

Continue the series

The Third Realm Audiobook By Karl Ove Knausgaard, Martin Aitken - translator cover art
The Third Realm By: Karl Ove Knausgaard, and others
The School of Night Audiobook By Karl Ove Knausgaard, Martin Aitken - translator cover art
The School of Night By: Karl Ove Knausgaard, and others
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Karl Ove has unique way of telling captivating story. The way he describes emotions, thoughts, interactions and inner texture so much speaks to me. Real non pretentious stuff. Love his work.

Captivating story until the very end

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