In his latest novel, “The School of Night” (out next month in the United States), the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard, 57, gives readers full access to the darkest thoughts of Kristian Hadeland, a young Norwegian photography student living in London. Over the course of the story, we witness his lack of empathy, his narcissistic delusions, his relentless ambition and, ultimately, the Faustian consequences of his life choices. What Knausgaard doesn’t provide, however, are details of his protagonist’s appearance.
Though “The School of Night” — unlike his best-known work, the six-volume series “My Struggle” (2009-11) — isn’t autofiction, Knausgaard says he had to fully embody his character in order to tell his story. “The only way I can write is from within him,” he said. “That’s why there’s no description of him visually in the book: I see everything from his perspective.” Still, he added, “I do know who he is.” So this past October, we asked the writer, who now lives part-time in London, to collaborate on a composite drawing of Hadeland with the forensic artist Tim Widden, 45, who works with British law enforcement, specializing in age progressions and facial reconstructions for missing and unidentified people. During their hourlong session, Knausgaard offered direction on everything from the length of his character’s nose to the thickness of his eyebrows, as Widden provided his own insights from his decades of drawing faces. Here, Hadeland as he exists in the mind of his creator.
THE HAIR
Kristian Hadeland’s “blond hair would be short on the sides and in the back and longer on the top,” said Karl Ove Knausgaard. “Spiky — not like punk spiky, but standing up, like an ’80s band or something.”
THE EYEBROWS
“Thick and dark, a contrast with the hair,” according to Knausgaard.
THE PUPILS
When humans feel empathy, their pupils dilate, Tim Widden explained as he reduced Hadeland’s to little more than pinpricks. “And if people don’t have empathy, their pupils shrink right down.”
THE EARRING
“He looks like he wants to be an artist,” said Knausgaard, in describing Hadeland’s “quite big” earring. “There’s some pretentiousness to him. His look is like one who wants to be, but is not.”
THE NOSE
Not short, not long, but “medium,” said Knausgaard. “The nose isn’t anything you notice, really. So a standard nose.”
THE LIPS
“They’re tight and very thin … [and] go down a little bit at the edges.”
Karl Leitz for Anthony Cotsifas Studio
