One of the first modernist novels First published in Norway in 1890, Hunger probes into the depths of consciousness with frightening and gripping power. Like the works of Dostoyevsky, it marks an extraordinary break with Western literary and humanistic traditions. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide...
One of the first modernist novels First published in Norway in 1890, Hunger probes into the depths of consciousness with fri...
Hamsun's portrait of a man rejecting the claims of bourgeois society for a Rousseauian embrace of Nature and Eros, in a remarkable new translation. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations...
Hamsun's portrait of a man rejecting the claims of bourgeois society for a Rousseauian embrace of Nature and Eros, in a remarkable new translation.
Mysteries (1892) is the story of Johan Nilsen Nagel, a mysterious stranger who suddenly turns up in a small Norwegian town one summer-and just as suddenly disappears. Nagel is a complete outsider, a sort of modern Christ treated in a spirit of near parody. He condemns the politics and thought of the age, brings comfort to the insulted and injured and gains the love of two women suggestive of the biblical Mary and Martha. But there is a sinister side of him: in his vest he carries a vial of Prussic acid. The novel creates a powerful sense of Nagel's stream of thought, as he increasingly...
Mysteries (1892) is the story of Johan Nilsen Nagel, a mysterious stranger who suddenly turns up in a small Norwegian town one summer-and just ...
When it first appeared in 1898, this fourth novel by celebrated Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun captured instant acclaim for its poetic, psychologically intense portrayal of love's predicament in a class-bound society. Set in a coastal village of late nineteenth-century Norway, Victoria follows two doomed lovers through their thwarted lifelong romance. Johannes, the son of a miller, finds inspiration for his writing in his passionate devotion to Victoria, an impoverished aristocrat constrained by family loyalty. Separated by class barriers and social pressure, the fated pair parts ways, only to...
When it first appeared in 1898, this fourth novel by celebrated Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun captured instant acclaim for its poetic, psychologically ...
The epic novel of man and nature that won its author the Nobel Prize in Literature-the first new English translation since the novel's original publication ninety years ago When it was first published in 1917, Growth of the Soil was immediately recognized as a masterpiece. Ninety years later it remains a transporting literary experience. In the story of Isak, who leaves his village to clear a homestead and raise a family amid the untilled tracts of the Norwegian back country, Knut Hamsun evokes the elemental bond between humans and the land. Newly translated by the...
The epic novel of man and nature that won its author the Nobel Prize in Literature-the first new English translation since the novel's original pub...
In a Norwegian coastal town, society's carefully woven threads begin to unravel when an unsettling stranger named Johan Nagel arrives. With an often brutal insight into human nature, Nagel draws out the townsfolk, exposing their darkest instincts and suppressed desires. At once arrogant and unassuming, righteous and depraved, Nagel seduces the entire community even as he turns it on its head--before disappearing as suddenly as he arrived.
In a Norwegian coastal town, society's carefully woven threads begin to unravel when an unsettling stranger named Johan Nagel arrives. With an ofte...
A true classic of modern literature that has been described as "one of the most disturbing novels in existence" (Time Out), Hunger is the story of a Norwegian artist who wanders the streets, struggling on the edge of starvation. As hunger overtakes him, he slides inexorably into paranoia and despair. The descent into madness is recounted by the unnamed narrator in increasingly urgent and disjointed prose, as he loses his grip on reality.
Arising from Hamsun's belief that literature ought to be about the mysterious workings of the human mind -- an attempt, he wrote, to...
A true classic of modern literature that has been described as "one of the most disturbing novels in existence" (Time Out), Hunger is...
Hunger by Knut Hamsun is a strange, semi-delirious, gorgeous narrative of a young man who wanders the Norwegian urban milieu and spends most of his time starving and contemplating eccentric ways of obtaining food for a few coins.
The occasional income he gets from his writing is barely adequate to keep him alive, and between the bouts of hunger he hallucinates and imagines -- and sometimes engages in -- sensuality in all its forms. Food and sex and vivid creative daydreams, in combination with a peculiar personal pride, keep him on the fringes, apart from others. And yet, his need for...
Hunger by Knut Hamsun is a strange, semi-delirious, gorgeous narrative of a young man who wanders the Norwegian urban milieu and spends most of his ti...