A Death in the Family, By Karl Ove Knausgaard

When this first volume of Knausgaard's quasi-fictionalised memoirs was published, some critics claimed the author was selling his soul in the cause of literature.

Transcribing from his own life, here the young Karl Ove revisits the central drama of his youth, the death of his father from alcohol abuse. "And to me, what had dad been to me? Someone I wished dead. So why all the tears?" Knausgaard attempts to tell us just that in a masterful book that confronts the ordinariness of death.

Translator (from Norwegian) Don Bartlett rises to the challenge magnificently.