Ute av verden (direct translation: Out of the World) is the 1998 debut novel by Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgård.

In his interview for The Paris Review's My First Time, Knausgard described the book's writing process as not being "related to me, in any normal sense.

In the first part, the 26-year-old Henrik Vankel, the story's narrator, is a substitute teacher at an elementary school in Northern Norway.

His time in upper secondary school was troubled, with difficulties fitting in socially and disastrous attempts to woo girls.

Historical figures are not always who he remembers them to be: Immanuel Kant is a physician and memoir writer, and Dante is a revolutionary.

Henrik gets a job working on a gigantic pillar-like structure in the middle of the ocean, the purpose of which is never made clear.

Through research, he finds out that the world he is in parted ways with the one he knows around the time of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, an event that never took place here.

[2] The Danish translation of the novel was reviewed for Politiken by Søren Vinterberg, who commended its "superb narrative technique and great psychological ambition".

This caused Knausgård to respond by calling Sweden "the land of the cyclops", dominated by a one-eyed view.