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Shop staff at Waterstone’s have a reputation for not being among the most knowledgeable about the books they’re selling. Trust me, then, to find the exception. I had just picked up volume 2 of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle, and the guy at the cash enquired, “So, I take it you liked book 1?”

“I haven’t read it yet, actually. I thought I’d start with volume two as the blurb inspired me more.”

At which an eyebrow shot up (his).

“I wouldn’t recommend you do that, sir. You should really start with volume 1.”

Trying to be dismissive and get on with the purchase, I gave him my best ‘I’ve worked in a bookshop for donkey’s years, I know what you’re doing here’ look.

“... ok. But some characters pop up in book 2 that were introduced in book 1.” Very obviously I need to work some more on that look.

Anyway, I walked out of the store with volume two, straight into a coffee shop to see what all the fuss was about.

Knausgaard’s My Struggle is everything I normally wouldn’t go for in a book. It’s split across six volumes, totalling over 3,600 pages, earning it Proustian comparisons from the sort of learned critics who like that sort of thing. And that in itself would usually make me run a mile. Furthermore, it’s autobiographical, when I tend to be much more propensed towards fiction. And it goes on, and on and on, about the banal trivia of everyday life, when I have very little patience for narrative-pausing digressions.

If My Struggle were a hashtag, it would be #firstworldproblems

So why have I, together with hundreds of thousands of others, become so obsessed with Knausgaard? And by obsessed I mean cutting a meeting short to steal a precious 10 minutes before my next appointment, to read some more pages. Or offering to pick up a file from a client in Gozo just to get to spend the ferry ride reading.

In the author’s native Norway, some workplaces had to impose Knausgaard-free days as everyone was talking constantly about him. He has received death threats, insults from family and friends, his wife had a breakdown after her most intimate moments were laid bare, not to mention that a bookstore in Norway was broken into and set fire to, the culprit saying he wanted to burn Knausgaard’s books because he was “the worst writer of all time”.

Knausgaard writes in mind-numbing detail about the most mundane activities in his life. A children’s birthday party – where nothing much of note happens other than Knausgaard’s disdain for the hostess’ pretentious canapes and music selection – can go on for 50-plus pages.

A bracket describing in a flashback how he met his current wife extends across 216 pages, at the end of which Knausgaard nonchalantly (the word I’m looking for here is arrogantly, because doing what he does requires a strong degree of authorial arrogance) returns to the exact spot where he’d left off, in mid-staircase outside his apartment. A sort of ‘… and as I was saying …’, as if he’d left us there a couple of paragraphs earlier.

And it is, of course, very long and self-referential. As one reviewer put it, six volumes across 3,600 pages about an author writing six volumes across 3,600 pages.

There is the obvious: it is very well-written, Knausgaard is one of those rare authors with the gift to make the most mundane of descriptions read like edge-of-your-seat page-turners.

But there is more. Knowing it is all real, for he does not change any names or do discreet in any way, gives it a kind of voyeuristic feel. It feels like peeping through the keyhole of this Norwegian’s very middle-class life, a bit like the novelty of watching the first Big Brother 15 years ago, when looking through a TV screen at strangers chopping garlic, smoking or making up the bed was still something we were not used to.

If My Struggle were a hashtag, it would be #firstworldproblems. Because Knausgaard’s struggle isn’t a struggle with famine, illness or war. It’s the struggle between choosing an overpriced Chardonnay or extortionate Kobe beef from the local deli; between sleeping with his daughter’s sitter or changing hairdresser.

And, I submit, Knausgaard’s indulging in being so self-absorbed is a guilty pleasure many of us seem to be enjoying vicariously. Because, truth be told, most of us luckily do not struggle with famine or war on a daily basis – superficial as it might be, banality is what rules many lives. And Knausgaard legitimises this.