“William Pierce’s long essay on Karl Ove Knausgaard is remarkable: it is searching, very intelligent, compellingly readable, and offers insights into Knausgaard’s work that no other commentator has yet achieved, or dared.”
Reality Hunger
by William Pierce
The first critical book published in North America about Knausgaard’s monumental six-part novel, Reality Hunger is a profound exploration that offers readers an insightful and critical analysis of what makes My Struggle one of the most compelling literary works of the 21st century. Pierce offers new insights into the author's ability to capture the essence of human experience, making the ordinary extraordinary. Reality Hunger is more than just a critique; it is a meditation on what it means to live a life as a writer, observing and observed, with all its complications and conundrums. His unique voice makes Reality Hunger an essential companion for fans of Knausgaard and scholars of contemporary literature alike.
William Pierce
William Pierce is the author of Reality Hunger: On Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Arrowsmith, 2016). His fiction has appeared in Granta, Ecotone, and elsewhere; his essays, in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and Consequence. He is senior editor of AGNI, where he writes an irregular column called Crucibles. With the Caine Prize-winning Nigerian novelist E. C. Osondu, he coedited The AGNI Portfolio of African Fiction.
