A Time for Everything

Description

A spellbinding pursuit of divine mysteries from the celebrated author of My Struggle, whose dazzling prose and landscapes evoke Nabokov and Knut Hamsun In the sixteenth century, Antinous Bellori, a boy of eleven, is lost in a dark forest and stumbles upon two glowing beings-one carrying a spear, the other a flaming torch. This event is decisive in Bellori's life, and he thereafter devotes himself to the pursuit and study of angels, the intermediaries of the divine. Stretching from the Garden of Eden to the present, A Time for Everything reimagines key allegorical encounters between humans and angels: the glow of the cherubim watching over Eden; the profound love between Cain and Abel despite their differences; Lot's shame in Sodom; Noah's isolation before the flood; Ezekiel tied to his bed, prophesying ferociously; the death of Christ; and the emergence of sensual, mischievous cherubs in the seventeenth century. Alighting upon these dramatic scenes-from the Bible and beyond--Knausgaard's imagination takes flight. The result is a dazzling display of storytelling at its majestic, spellbinding best. Incorporating and challenging tradition, legend, and the Apocrypha, these penetrating glimpses hazard chilling questions: can the nature of the divine undergo change, and can the immortal perish?

Karl Ove Knausgaard's debut novel Out of the World won the Norwegian Critics Prize in 2004 and his A Time for Everything was a finalist for the Nordic Council Prize. My Struggle is a New York Times Best Seller and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Knausgaard writes regularly for The New York Times Magazine. Rachel Cusk wrote that My Struggle "deserves to be called perhaps the most significant literary enterprise of our times." James Anderson's literary translations from the Norwegian include Berlin Poplars by Anne B. Ragde, Nutmeg by Kristin Valla, and several works by Jostein Gaarder.

Praise for A Time for Everything: A marvelous book . . . Knausgaard's most evident strength as a writer is his gift for minute description, especially of nature, but also of the human psyche . . . The descriptions of forests, floods, streams, fields, and Henrik Vankel's secluded island are ravishing and . . . create the feeling that we are being transported, again and again, into some primordial world. -Ingrid D. Rowland, The New York Review of Books The writing glows with an intense awareness of the here and now, and loving observations of landscapes and objects . . . this is an extraordinary novel, and completely original. -The Independent "A marvelous book. . . . Knausgaard's most evident strength as a writer is his gift for minute description, especially of nature, but also of the human psyche. . . . The descriptions of forests, floods, streams, fields, and Henrik Vankel's secluded island are ravishing and . . . create the feeling that we are being transported, again and again, into some primordial world." -Ingrid D. Rowland, The New York Review of Books "It may well become a cult novel." -The Guardian "The writing glows with an intense awareness of the here and now, and loving observations of landscapes and objects . . . this is an extraordinary novel, and completely original." -The Independent Praise for My Struggle: "This deserves to be called perhaps the most significant literary enterprise of our times." - Rachel Cusk, The Guardian "Knausgaard's command of the traditional novelistic procedure is the reason these books are the opposite of dull, though on the face of it they should be. Knausgaard is always spinning a tale, always drawing the reader along with some romantic entanglement, sexual disaster, or emotional crisis. He feeds in atmosphere in just the right amounts; his pacing is flawless. How wonderful to read an experimental novel that fires every nerve ending while summoning in the reader the sheer sense of how amazing it is to be alive, on this planet and no other." - Jeffrey Eugenides, The New York Times Book Review "What's notable is Karl Ove's ability, rare these days, to be fully present in and mindful of his own existence. Every detail is put down without apparent vanity or decoration, as if the writing and the living are happening simultaneously. There shouldn't be anything remarkable about any of it except for the fact that it immerses you totally. You live his life with him." - Zadie Smith, The New York Review of Books