The school of night

In Knausgaard's ingenious fourth entry in the Morning Star series (after The Third Realm), a self-absorbed Norwegian photographer strikes a Faustian bargain in exchange for success. As a student in London, Kristian Hadeland meets mysterious Dutch artist Hans, who shows him the first photo ever taken: Louis Daguerre's 1838 picture of a street in Paris. The photo contains a faint image of a dark man possibly getting his shoes shined, which Hans says is the Devil. Following a harsh critique of his first portfolio by a visiting professor, Kristian steals a dead cat from a vet clinic and photographs its skeleton after boiling down the corpse, a signature shot that later propels him to fame. Hans also introduces Kristian to Vivian, a theater director staging an updated rendition of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. Their meeting sends Kristian down a rabbit hole into Marlowe, Shakespeare, and London's occult history. After he accidentally kills an unhoused person during a scuffle, he manages to avoid the consequences and continue his career. In the engrossing second half of the novel, set 24 years later, Kristian is forced to face the ugly truth behind his success and the price paid by his soul. Knausgaard masterfully charts his antihero's ascending ambition and the encroaching forces that eventually snuff it out. It's a remarkable addition to an exciting and disturbing series. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Jan.)

A photography student strikes a deal with, perhaps, the Devil. Knausgaard's acclaimed six-volume autofiction epic,My Struggle (2012-2018), inevitably drew accusations of extreme narcissism for the author. But the Karl Ove character conjured up in those books was defined by his ordinariness; this bleak, somewhat overstuffed novel truly is a portrait of self-absorption. Kristian Hadeland is an aspiring art photographer who, in 1985, has left his native Norway to study in London. Disdainful of his teachers' criticism of his work, he decides to cut his own path, often in troubling ways; for instance, he attempts to boil a dead cat down to its bones in his apartment for the sake of a vague photo project. After cutting off contact with his parents in a fit of pique, his sole friend is Hans, a mysterious Dutch expat working as a stage designer for a production ofDoctor Faustus. And this novel is essentially the Faust tale with a modern spin, following Kristian's path after the Mephistophelian Hans befriends him, pivoting on an altercation between Kristian and a homeless man who dies after they tussle over a cigarette lighter. Hans has pulled some levers to help Kristian escape a manslaughter charge, freeing him to pursue photo-world glory. But at what cost? Many familiar Knausgaardian elements are at play here: Granular explorations of youth and art-making, philosophizing on religion, a scatological detour. But the author is more concerned with ethics than in his previous books, and this novel is overly bulky for the kind of straightforward morality play it imagines. It also asks the reader to spend a lot of time with a profoundly unlikeable young Kristian, who repetitively bemoans how every career opportunity is beneath him and that family and women are drags on artistic greatness. As in the Faust story, comeuppance arrives, but it takes a while. Knausgaard at his darkest, and most sluggish. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.