The shock came when we travelled down to Kristiansand, to the house in which he had grown up, where he had lived out his final years together with his mother, our grandmother. So it came as no surprise to us to receive word that he was dead.

Our uncle called my brother one time and told us we had to do something and take care of our father, but we said no, that was out of the question, he had to look after himself. Our father drank too much, we knew that, but what that actually entailed was still something we were ignorant about. Neither of us had been in touch with him during his final years and although we were aware that a lot of strange stuff had been going on – once we were informed that he had disappeared and the police were out searching for him, only for him to turn up at a hospital a few days later, unable to walk having suffered some kind of temporary paralysis, for which reason he was sent to a treatment home for alcoholics – it all took place outside our field of vision and was therefore rather abstract. And what my brother was referring to there in the car were the circumstances of his death. We were in Kristiansand because my father had died. My brother switched on the wipers, I remember, and then without looking at me said: “You can write about this. It was hot and overcast, and as we were waiting it began to rain. We were in Kristiansand, the town my father was from, and had stopped at a junction and were waiting for a gap in the traffic so we could pull out. I t was a summer’s day 18 years ago and I was sitting in a car with my brother.

Karl knausgaard