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The Wolves of Eternity

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The Wolves of Eternity

By: Karl Ove Knausgaard, Martin Aitken - translator
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Gilli Messer, Natasha Soudek, Vas Eli
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

The future is no more, and eternity has begun.

It's 1986 and a nuclear reactor has exploded in Chernobyl. Syvert Løyning returns home from military service to live with his mother and brother on the outskirts of a town in Southern Norway. One night, he dreams of his late father, and can't shake him from his mind. Searching through his father's belongings for clues and connections, he finds a cache of letters that lead to the Soviet Union.

In present-day Russia, Alevtina is trying to balance work and family. She has always sought the answers to life's big questions, but is preoccupied with care of her young son. Her friend Vasilisa offers some nourishment: she is writing a book about an ancient feature of Russian culture, the belief in eternal life. Meantime, Alevtina is heading towards a meeting that will redraw the contours of her world.

A searching and humane novel, The Wolves of Eternity is an intimate journey into the experiences of a half-brother and half-sister in their two different - yet deeply connected - lives. The second novel in Karl Ove Knausgaard's extraordinary new series, it expands the universe of The Morning Star in the decades before the blazing and mysterious star descends.

©2023 Karl Ove Knausgaard (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Metaphysical & Visionary World Literature Russia

Continue the series

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The Third Realm By: Karl Ove Knausgaard, and others
The School of Night cover art
The School of Night By: Karl Ove Knausgaard, and others

Critic Reviews

Knausgaard is among the finest writers alive.
[An] enormously compelling book… The range of subjects The Wolves of Eternity explores is fascinating
Casts an existential spell…captivating… Big themes — the cosmos, death and resurrection — are amplified through ghostly visitations, doppelgänger lives and the question of what, if anything, lies beyond human existence
Compelling
The nature and possibility of immortality is a recurring theme, and digressions abound — communicating trees, broken families, Chernobyl, death, etc. But by sticking close to his characters, Knausgaard addresses those heady topics with an easy-going grace
Compulsively readable...Knausgaard remains one of the great chroniclers of the moment-by-moment experience of life
An intelligent, expansive novel
Immersive… It is so engrossing and entertaining that I crammed in its 800 pages like a glutton devouring a box of chocolates
Knausgaard, master of fiction as an inquiry into the self, now revives fiction as an inquiry into the cosmos, re-enchanting the latter with those beguiling secrets science had stolen from it
I read The Morning Star compulsively, and stayed awake all night after finishing it. (Brandon Taylor)
All stars
Most relevant
Complexity of philosophy and ethics Subject matter. Nature vs science. Russian exploration after glasnost and in the era of Putin

Writing

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Here we have characters with hopes and human frailties amid a world of inevitable decline.

Knausgaard’s Genius

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.