Knausgaard’s The School of Night Probes Art, Ambition, and a Shadowy Pact

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The School of Night follows a brash 20-year-old Norwegian photographer in 1985 London whose quest for artistic greatness collides with Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus-like themes, aided and haunted by a Mephistophelian figure. Structured as a 500-page meditation—often witty, sometimes macabre—the novel tracks Kristian’s ascent to celebrity, his egotism, a cryptic bargain’s costs, and the ultimate question of whether power in art comes with a moral price or remains unknowable; the narrative spans from London to a 2009 spotlight, ending in a dramatic, disquieting reckoning about ambition, memory, and meaning.