Karl Ove Knausgaard's “The Third Realm ”Leans into Unsettling and Supernatural — Read an Excerpt (Exclusive)

"No one knows how to write the novel," the author explains, "And if they do, it's not going to be a very good novel"

Karl Ove Knausgaard is no longer living consistently in the realm of myth and magic that populates his newest novel, The Third Realm, out now from Penguin Press. But for him, that's a good thing. After all, "I have to make dinner," he tells PEOPLE.

The bestselling author, most well-known for his My Struggle autobiographical series, doesn't read the reviews if he can help it. He likes meeting with readers, even though he "spent many years not being able almost to do events, because I'm so nervous and shy and stuff," but has gotten away from the cloistered writing life, with long stretches of alone time to focus on the craft. "I'm a writer because I'm a human being and a father, and so on," he says.

And that shift in focus has changed his writing process entirely. "When I started out, I thought, I have to be alone. I have to have the time. I was traveling to lighthouses or to cabins [to write] and I was incredibly not productive," Knausgaard, 55, explains. "It was like six years between novels, and then I had children."

Now, Knausgaard's day starts with the school run. Then he writes for five or so hours, then it's time for dinner and family. "If you do that five days a week throughout the year, it becomes a novel, and that's how I'm doing it," he says. "No one knows how to write the novel," the author explains. "And if they do, it's not going to be a very good novel ... I had to lower the ambition, and I had to accept whatever came and I've never been so productive since."

That productivity has become The Third Realm, the third in the The Morning Star series, in which a strange new star appears in the sky above Norway, bringing with it foreboding, agitation and fear. And on top of the wide-ranging impact on citizens' lives, comes another stunning side effect: Since its appearance, no one has died.

"What I'm interested in is what's unsettling," he says, of where the novel came from. "It's crazy: death, for instance, comes here and picks us one by one, and we're all gone and on to the next generation ... what is that? We don't think about it, and we have to live our lives."

Much like his previous work, Knausgaard considers The Third Realm, which follows The Morning Star and The Wolves of Eternity, "almost not a novel ...  it's to me, one long story," he says. "A novel isn't restricted by what you're thinking. It's so much else going on and you don't know what it means or where it goes. These books are many different characters that are very vaguely connected."

Below, in an exclusive excerpt from The Third Realm, which offers a peek inside this strange, delightful world.

Related: PEOPLE's Best Books of September 2024: Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo and Memoirs from Kenny G, Connie Chung and Hillary Clinton

They say that depression is congealed anger. I think of it as a petrified troll. A creature of darkness and the incomplete — irate, dangerous — transformed by daylight into something unmoving and lifeless.

I think of mania as similar to forgetting yourself, the way you might forget a saucepan on a hot stove.

The psychosis occurs when the mania exhausts itself, when the encoun­ter with reality is the only thing left for it (and mania fears reality more than anything else). The psychosis is like one of the three doors in the folk tales, the one that must never be opened no matter what. It mustn’t be opened. Everyone knows. And yet it always gets opened in the end. When faced with nothing and something, you choose something first.

The folk tales.

The trolls, the three doors, the forest. The one where the animals can talk, and people turn into animals. The one with witches, crofters, kings, underground halls, tree stumps, princesses no one can spellbind, stepmothers and poor women, mountain pastures and rugged blue peaks.

Even as a small girl, I sensed that the folk tales were concealing some­thing. And that their secrets were significant. Later I would read Jung and his theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious, but that wasn’t what I’d sensed was present in the tales, it was something else. What I took from Jung was that I was the Magician and Arne the Orphan (even though his relationship with his father, right until his father died, had been a happy one, and even though he continued to enjoy a happy relationship with his mother), as well as an understanding of the universality and power of symbols. Apart from that, nothing.

The Magician is the one who transforms. The Magician is a revolution­ary. The Orphan is the one who needs. The Orphan is a manipulator.

Hell isn’t the psychosis. Hell is leaving the psychosis. Hell on earth is what that is. Nothing of what you’ve thought, seen or felt has been true. And you’ve thought, seen and felt with your entire being. But that’s not all. Now suddenly they’re staring at you, your husband and kids. Imploringly or angrily, I’m not sure which is worse.

Related: See PEOPLE’s Must-Read Books of Fall 2024: Best Fiction, Thrillers, Memoirs and More

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer , from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

That’s when the tears come. The bottomless grief. Over what?

My self, my inadequacy.

Nobody wants a mad mother. Nobody wants to be one either.

"Are you normal now?" Heming once asked when they came to visit me.

What could I do but nod and cry and hold his reluctant body tightly to my own?

We arrived at the summer house late in the evening, having driven all day. Heming, Asle and Ingvild on the back seat, more or less paralyzed by the monotony. Arne, whose excitement had risen during the last part of the journey, the landscape becoming more and more familiar to him, switched off the engine and turned beaming to the kids. "Eight hours and two minutes," he said. "Thirteen minutes up on last year!"

"Well done," said Ingvild, smiling back. The twins didn’t react.

"Everyone take their own things inside with them," Arne said. "And do it now so it’s done. Ingvild, you bring the cat in, will you?"

"The child lock’s on," said Heming.

"Yes, yes, all right," said Arne. "There, it’s off now."

I looked at Ingvild and our eyes came together. She smiled at me the same way she’d smiled at Arne, lifted the cat carrier from her lap, put it down on the seat next to her and undid her seat belt, as the boys clambered out the other side.

She was too obliging.

"It’s all right to get annoyed, you know," I said.

"Yes," she said, and smiled again. But this time there was a flicker of something darker in her eyes. She had it in her, a lot of it.

From THE THIRD REALM by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Used with permission of the publisher, Penguin Press. Copyright ©2022 by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Translation copyright ©Martin Aitken 2024.

The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard is available now, wherever books are sold.

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.