Last fall, a picture of Jeremy Strong walking down the street in New York with Karl Ove Knausgaard made the rounds online. The Succession star, known for his unabashed sincerity, had previously described the Norwegian writer as his “idol.” Once, in a video, he called Knausgaard’s autobiographical novel, My Struggle, “the most honest expression of life that I’ve ever read,” and named the six-volume series his favorite book of all time.
Knausgaard inspires this sort of rapturous praise. His legion of admirers grew with each volume of My Struggle, which Archipelago Books began releasing in translation in 2014. His new novel, The School of Night, comes out January 13. The fourth installment of his Morning Star cycle, it’s a propulsive, horror-tinged, and very fun retelling of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. It follows a 20-year-old photography student in 1980s London as he makes a deal with the devil (presenting as a vaguely menacing hippie) to achieve artistic success.
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