"When I watch programmes about the extermination camps on TV I cannot sleep, " he added.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Wales | Mid | Prisoner recalls Auschwitz horror

The need for totality that brings pages about playing the guitar, about drinking tea, about wearing his Doc Martens and listening to his Walkman, about how his brother, Yngve, has always thought the music of Queen unfairly underestimated, about the name of the band that he later formed with his brother (named, rather wonderfully, Kafkatrakterne), also brings superb, lingering, celestial passages, like the one in which Knausgaard cannot sleep, and paces his apartment.

NEWYORKER: Total Recall

And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

CNN: Brought up to be a good man