Do we like them?

Do we like Karl Ove Knausgård?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Strong on the climate and nothing nasty about LGBTQ+ people turned up, but his 2015 immigration comments are a real contested mark.

Knausgård is the Norwegian writer who turned his own life into the six-volume My Struggle series, a doorstopper of memoir-style novels that made him a literary name well beyond Norway. He has since written a seasons quartet and a long run of further novels. In 2019 he was picked for the Future Library project, writing a manuscript that stays sealed until 2114.

His biggest stoush came in May 2015, when he fired off a long essay in Dagens Nyheter calling Swedes “Cyclops-like”, unwilling to see parts of reality. He also argued the Swedish prime minister was wrong to call the Sweden Democrats a neo-fascist party. Norwegian media barely blinked, but the Swedes took offence.

Reaction split. Norwegian author Erlend Loe called the piece an elegant defence and later said the Swedish criticism went too far. Swedish comedian Jonas Gardell first read it as the complaint of a hurt, privileged man, then called it “a defense of the right-wing extremist movement”. That is Gardell's reading, and it is the heart of the asterisk.

Months later he told Aftenposten that Norway's anti-immigration Progress Party was a “blessing” for Norwegian politics, because it meant immigration problems could be discussed. He said he did not share the party's views, but that it was good they could voice them without being demonised. Fellow Swedish writer Jan Guillou answered that Knausgård had fallen for a right-wing belief that immigration can't be discussed in Sweden.

On the harm check, that is the whole list we could find: his own words on immigration and two political parties, nothing about LGBTQ+ people or women, and no sign he has worked with anyone pushing harm. Where you land depends on whether you read him as defending free debate or as handing cover to the far right. He did not endorse either party in what we read.

On the planet he is on the right side. In 2015 he told the Guardian that Norway's Arctic oil plans were a disgrace, and he signed a petition with about 200 cultural figures asking the government to cancel a new drilling round. The signers threatened to go to court over the constitution's right to a liveable climate. That is a real stand for the planet, in his own country, against the oil money.