I’ll be honest. When I first picked up The Wolves of Eternity, I expected another thousand-page slog through the hyper-specific, mundane details of a middle-aged man’s life. If you’ve read any of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series, you know the drill. You spend twenty pages reading about how he makes tea or cleans a bathroom. But this book? It's different. It’s bigger. It’s weirder. It’s basically Knausgaard trying to figure out if we ever actually die, or if we’re just part of some massive, biological continuum that doesn't care about our individual names.
The book is the second installment in his new cycle, following The Morning Star. But you don’t necessarily need to have read the first one to feel the weight of this one. It starts in 1986. We meet Syvert Løyning, a young guy returning home from military service to live with his mother and brother. He finds a stash of letters from his late father—letters that point to a secret life in the Soviet Union.
The Wolves of Eternity and the Obsession with Russia
The first half of the book is classic Knausgaard. It’s slow. It’s deliberate. We watch Syvert look for a job, drink beer, fall in love, and obsess over his father’s past. Then, the book shifts. Suddenly, we’re in modern-day Russia. We meet Alevtina, a biologist living in Moscow, who is grappling with the very same themes Syvert was poking at decades earlier: the nature of life, the persistence of the soul, and the terrifying possibility of physical immortality.
This isn't just a plot device. Knausgaard is tapping into real historical and scientific movements here. He spends a lot of time referencing Russian Cosmism—a genuine philosophical movement from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thinkers like Nikolai Fedorov actually believed that humans had a moral obligation to use science to achieve physical immortality and even resurrect the dead. It sounds like sci-fi, but for these guys, it was a literal, spiritual mission.
What’s actually going on with the biology?
Alevtina’s sections are dense. They’re heavy with real biological theory. She talks about the "Wolf of Eternity"—a metaphor for the relentless, devouring nature of life that persists even as individual organisms perish. It’s a bit grim. But it’s also strangely hopeful if you look at it from a certain angle.
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The prose varies wildly here. Sometimes Knausgaard is short. Blunt. "The forest was still." Other times, he goes on these massive, winding tangents about the molecular structure of cells or the way light hits a specific type of moss in the Russian woods. It mirrors the feeling of being alive—sometimes everything is a blur, and sometimes you're hyper-focused on a single, tiny detail that feels like the most important thing in the universe.
Why This Book Feels Different From My Struggle
People always ask if they should bother with these newer, massive novels if they’ve already finished the six volumes of his autobiography. Honestly, yeah. You should. The Wolves of Eternity feels less like a diary and more like a myth.
While My Struggle was about the "I," this new cycle is about the "We." It’s about the things that connect us across generations and borders. Syvert’s search for his father in the 80s and Alevtina’s scientific inquiries in the 2020s are two sides of the same coin. They’re both trying to bridge the gap between the living and the dead.
The structure is intentionally lopsided. The first section with Syvert is huge. It takes up the majority of the book. Then Alevtina’s part comes in, and the perspective shifts so radically it almost gives you whiplash. It’s not a "perfect" novel structure. It doesn't follow the three-act play rules you learned in high school. It’s messy. It’s human.
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The Real-World Philosophy Behind the Fiction
Knausgaard isn't making up the Russian connection. He’s been very vocal in interviews—like his 2023 talk at the Southbank Centre—about his fascination with the Russian landscape and its intellectual history. He sees Russia as a place where the boundary between the material world and the spiritual world is thinner.
- Nikolai Fedorov: The "Common Task" philosopher who wanted to turn the earth into a spaceship to find room for all the resurrected dead.
- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky: The father of rocket science who was actually inspired by these mystical ideas of colonizing space to house immortal humans.
- Contemporary Transhumanism: The book draws a direct line from these old Russian mystics to the Silicon Valley billionaires currently spending millions to "solve" death.
It’s all connected. The book suggests that our modern obsession with living forever isn't new. We’ve just swapped out the religious language for coding and CRISPR.
Is It Actually Worth the 800-Page Commitment?
Look, I'm not going to lie to you. There are parts of this book where you will wonder why you're reading about a guy's mundane job search for 100 pages. But that’s the trick. Knausgaard builds a world that is so grounded in the "boring" reality of life that when the weird, supernatural, or deeply philosophical elements creep in, they hit ten times harder.
When that mysterious star appears in the sky—the one from the first book—it doesn't feel like a cheap plot twist. It feels like a rupture in reality. You’ve been standing in the mud with the characters for so long that when they look up at the sky, you’re looking up with them.
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The title itself, The Wolves of Eternity, comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson, though it's interpreted through this lens of biological hunger. Life wants to keep going. It doesn't care about Syvert's heartbreak or Alevtina's career anxieties. It just moves.
Practical Insights for Reading Knausgaard
If you're going to dive into this, don't try to speed-read it. That’s a mistake. You have to let the rhythm of the sentences dictate your pace.
- Embrace the tangents. When he starts talking about the history of a specific Russian village or the mechanics of a cell, don't skip it. These aren't filler. They are the "connective tissue" of the book's argument about immortality.
- Read for the atmosphere. The way he describes the Norwegian coast in the 80s is incredibly evocative. You can practically smell the salt air and the stale cigarette smoke in the kitchen.
- Don't look for easy answers. Knausgaard doesn't give them. He ends sections abruptly. He leaves threads hanging. It’s frustrating, but it’s also why the book stays in your head for weeks after you close it.
The translation by Martin Aitken is also worth mentioning. It manages to capture that specific Knausgaardian "plainness" without it feeling flat. It’s a hard balance to strike. The language is simple, but the ideas are massive.
The Wolves of Eternity is a reminder that we are all part of a story that started long before we were born and will continue long after we're gone. It’s a book about family secrets, the terrifying vastness of the Russian woods, and the simple, everyday mystery of being a conscious being in a world that eventually demands our exit.
To get the most out of this experience, start by reflecting on your own family history—the gaps in the stories you were told about your parents or grandparents. That sense of an "unrecorded life" is the engine that drives this entire novel. If you can tap into that personal curiosity, the 800 pages will fly by.