Hello and welcome to Ask Penguin, the podcast all about books, their authors and their publishers.

I'm Rihanna Dillon and in each episode, I sit down with brilliant writers and penguin colleagues

to talk about their latest work and the books they can't stop recommending.

Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Karlover Knowsgard.

Karlova is best known for his six-part autobiographical series, My Struggle,

beginning with a death in the family and ending with the end. The books trace his journey

from childhood through to adulthood and together they create an extraordinary

portrait of human life. The series has been described as frame-breaking, obsessively detailed

and radically confessional. Over the years, Kalova has been recognised with numerous awards,

including the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature,

the Braga Prize and the Jerusalem Prize. His latest novel, The School of Night, is part of the

Morning Star sequence, though it absolutely can be read as a standalone. It is genuinely quite

horrifying and totally absorbing. Set in South East London in 1985, it follows Christian Hadland, a 20-year-old

photography student who's left his family in Norway in search of success and recognition.

When he meets Hans, an eccentric Dutch artist, Christian begins to believe that anything is

possible in art. But after one terrible night, his

future hangs in the balance, and that night threatens to follow him for the rest of his life.

Kalova, welcome to Ask Penguin. Thank you so much for joining us being here.

Thank you for having me.

So the School of Night is the fourth book in your Morning Star sequence? Yeah, I think so,

yes, fourth. But it also works as a standalone? Yeah, very much so. Very much so. So was that always

your intention? No, it wasn't. I just started writing the Morning Star novel and I realized

...