If no one ever died, what would happen then?

For several days, a bright new star in the sky above Norway has blazed over the restless lives of those below.

Tove, an artist, is consumed by intense creativity as she spirals towards psychosis. Line falls in love with a musician named Valdemar and is lured to a secret death metal gig in a remote forest.

Geir, a policeman, is investigating a ritual murder but chances upon something more horrifying even than the bodies in the trees - the last bodies he sees, because, as undertaker Syvert is the first to realise, people have stopped dying since the star appeared.

What is haunting the world - and why?

As profound as it is thrilling, Karl Ove Knausgaard's The Third Realm is a breathtaking novel about ordinary lives on the cusp of irrevocable change.