Having left his first wife, Karl Ove Knausgaard is struck by an overwhelming urge to get away, and he settles in Stockholm. Lonely and depressed, he strikes up a deep friendship with another exiled Norwegian, the Nietzschean, intellectual boxing fanatic Geir. He tracks down Linda, whom he first met at a writers’ course a few years earlier and who fascinated him deeply.A Man in Love, the second part of Knausgaard’sMy Strugglecycle of novels, is at heart a love story – the story of Karl Ove falling in love with his present wife Linda and the long, dramatic period before they become a couple. But the novel also tells other stories – of the earth-shattering experience of becoming a father as well as of the more mundane struggles of family life, of ridiculously unsuccessful holidays, humiliating antenatal music classes, fights with quarrelsome neighbours, the emotional strains of childrens’ birthday parties and of pushing a pram around Stockholm when one really wants to write a follow-up to an acclaimed debut novel.