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Knut Hamsun (1859–1952)

Author of Hunger

323+ Works 14,053 Members 304 Reviews 110 Favorited

About the Author

Knut Pedersen Hamsun was born in Gudbrandsdalen, Norway on August 4, 1859 and grew up in poverty in Hamarøy. At the age of 17, he became an apprentice to a ropemaker and also began to dabble in writing. This eventually became his full-time career. He wrote numerous books during his lifetime show more including The Intellectual Life of Modern America, Hunger, and Pan. In 1920, his novel Growth of the Soil, a book describing the attraction and honesty of working with the land, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. As a supporter of Hitler and the Nazi Occupation of Norway during World War II, Hamsun was charged with treason for his affiliation with the party after the war ended. His property was seized, he was placed under psychiatric observation, and his last years were spent in poverty. He died on February 19, 1952. A 15-volume compilation of his complete works was published posthumously in 1954. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Wilse

Series

Works by Knut Hamsun

Hunger (1890) 4,741 copies
Growth of the Soil (1921) 1,793 copies
Mysteries (1892) 1,421 copies
Victoria (1898) 848 copies
Wayfarers (1927) — Author — 360 copies
Dreamers (1904) 237 copies
On Overgrown Paths (1949) 237 copies
The Wanderer (1909) 229 copies
The Women at the Pump (1920) 196 copies
Under the Autumn Star (1906) 146 copies
The Ring is Closed (1936) — Author — 120 copies
The Last Chapter (1923) 117 copies
August (1930) 117 copies
Segelfoss Town (1915) 113 copies
The Road Leads On (1933) — Author — 105 copies
Rosa (1926) 99 copies
Tales of Love & Loss (1997) 97 copies
The Last Joy (1912) — Author — 86 copies
Benoni (1908) — Author — 86 copies
Children of the Age (1913) 81 copies
In Wonderland (1903) 73 copies
Shallow Soil (1893) 55 copies
Benoni / Rosa (1908) — Author — 41 copies
The Wild Choir (1974) 38 copies
Samlede verker (1992) 35 copies
La regina di Saba (1897) 26 copies
Trilogía del vagabundo (1929) 20 copies
Bjørger (1981) 17 copies
Samlede verker. B.1 Sult ; Mysterier (1992) — Author — 16 copies
Pan. Victoria (2007) 16 copies
Hambre Pan (1901) — Author — 14 copies
Hamsuns beste (2005) 14 copies
Romans (1999) 13 copies
Noveller (1978) 11 copies
Munken Vendt (2008) 10 copies
Esclaves de l'amour (1990) 10 copies
Pan e altri racconti — Author — 9 copies
Pan: L'estrema gioia: romanzi (1970) — Author — 9 copies
Obras escogidas. I (1957) 7 copies
Selected Letters, Volume 2: 1898-1952 (1998) — Author — 7 copies
Sult : et fragment (1999) 6 copies
Brev til Marie (1970) 6 copies
Die großen Erzählungen (2005) 5 copies
In the Grip of Life (1924) 5 copies
Dikte 5 copies
Victoria/Mysterier (1998) 4 copies
Romane (1990) 4 copies
Fome Novela Gráfica (2021) 4 copies
Die Novellen II. (1988) 4 copies
Frammenti di vita (1989) 3 copies
Ord av Knut Hamsun (1996) 3 copies
Badas: Panas: Viktorija (2006) 3 copies
Fame e cespugli 3 copies
Glad / Viktorija (2009) 3 copies
"Lurtonen" (1995) 3 copies
Die Novellen I (1982) 3 copies
Pan , Vagabundentage (1984) 3 copies
Obras completas 3 copies
Mystérie ; Pan 2 copies
Knut Hamsun 2 copies
Rosa (2009) 2 copies
Livets spil 2 copies
Frauensieg (1942) 2 copies
Tulácké dny 2 copies
Pienoisromaanit 2 copies
Editor Lynge 2 copies
6 Books By Knut Hamsun (2009) 2 copies
Kratskog 2 copies
Livet ivold 1 copy
Pan Livro 1 1 copy
Skitaltsy (2010) 1 copy
Szarady 1 copy
PÃO E AMOR 1 copy
al-Ju (1999) 1 copy
Mysterie 1 copy
o pan / ο παν (2002) 1 copy
Mystérie 1 copy
Sult 1 copy
abdUllahs hAab — Contributor — 1 copy
Skitnice, I. 1 copy
Et gjensyn 1 copy
Skitnice 1 copy
Ein Gespenst und andere Erlebnisse — Author — 1 copy
Jul i åsen 1 copy
Artikler 1 copy
Knut Hamsun, 1920 (1993) 1 copy
Sateenkaari 1 copy
Opere 1 copy
Norra puell 1 copy
Vida azafosa 1 copy

Associated Works

Great Stories by Nobel Prize Winners (1959) — Contributor — 76 copies
Knut Hamsun - min far (1976) 14 copies
Min klient Knut Hamsun (1979) — Omtalt person — 8 copies
Ghosts and Ghastlies (1976) — Contributor — 5 copies
Norway's Best Stories (1927) — Contributor — 4 copies
Victoria [2013 film] — Original book — 2 copies

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Discussions

Hunger by Knut Hamsun in Book talk (March 2015)

Reviews

I spent most of my younger reading years, reading Stephen King and others like him. Sometime in high school I discovered classics and read pretty much nothing but books written many years before I was born. Then I started to enjoy books from the 1960s-80s or so. Around fifteen years ago I started to read almost exclusively modern novels, with the occasional dip in the classics for old time's sake. Sometimes I would become obsessed with a certain author and not only read everything they wrote, but also try to explore the people who influenced the people who were influencing me. I discovered Knut Hamsun during my Charles Bukowski phase, read one of his books (Hunger), and liked it.

Another reviewer on Goodreads called this book, "Walden for emotionally-stunted teens trapped in adult-sized bodies." I couldn't agree more. The protagonist, Thomas Glahn, is living an ascetic life in a cabin on the woods of Norway. He tells time by the sun, ocean, birds, and grass. He hunts and fishes for all his food. These are things that often make a character likeable, but not this guy.

Glahn is obsessed with multiple "young girls," and hooks up with at least two of them. Whenever one of them doesn't give him the attention he desires, he throws a fit. At one point he threw her shoes off of a boat because he thought she was ignoring him. When he's jealous that she's talking to another man, he goes up to that man and spits in his ear. Finally, when he's leaving town and she asks if she could have his dog to remember him by, Glahn shoots his dog in the head and then sends the body to the girl. He's an immature, spoiled, racist (not surprising, since the author was good friends with Hitler, Goebbels, and the like) character.

The final part of the book is written by someone who hates Glahn and eventually murdered him...because he's jealous of the effect Glahn has a very young Tamil girl he's courting. What a waste of time this book was.
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bookonion | 28 other reviews | Mar 9, 2024 |
Norwegian Wood

It was hard to believe that this book was written in 1892. Certainly in style it’s ahead of its time. The depiction of the inner life of its characters, the stream of consciousness writing, the strange feelings we get of the troubled Camus-like anti-hero, are the most memorable features of this Norwegian novel.

Although written in the third person, Hansun drops into the mind of Nagel, the rebel without a cause who is the protagonist of this fascinating book.

The book starts with Nagel who| arrives unannounced at a Norwegian coastal town knowing no one, wearing a yellow suit and carrying a fur coat and a violin-less violin case. He takes a room at the local hotel and proceeds to embark upon some very unpredictable acts whose purposes are at odds with conventional society.

He takes pleasure in persuading people to act contravention to their own dispositions. He orders a new coat for the town jester, a cripple who ignorant villagers laugh at, calling him as “the midget”. He insists on buying an old worn-out chair from a poor widow for a price that exceeds her annual income. These people don’t want his money but Nagel wants them to go against their virtue of poverty to satisfy himself.

To Nigel money is no object and he throws it around hosting a “stag party” for the towns local dignitaries.

The dinner party scene was the highlight of the book. The town’s pastor, doctor, deputy and Negal sit around a table discussing world políticas. When thoroughly inebriated the move on to literature. Negal is contemptuous of Tolstoy, and Ibsen, calling them mediocre. He despises Marx, socialists and liberals, claiming the latter are makers of bureaucracies whose height of legislation is the setting up of a committee to improve the footwear of mailmen.

As the book progresses Nagel becomes manic, contradictory and irrational in his thought patterns. He confuses himself as his opposing desires clash. He proclaims his useless passion for the pastor’s blond-haired daughter and proposes to a poor gray-haired widow. When he falls down in his manic dementia the novel veers from the third person narrative to the stream of consciousness of Nagel’s mind.

Mysteries is a very intriguing book. I had to keep reminding myself that it was written in the 19th century. I had to google this writer, Knut Hamsun - I’d chanced upon the novel by accident. I needed to know more. This was when I was halfway through the book. I discovers he had, much later in life, praised Hitler. I almost stopped reading but continued to the end because I felt there must be some obscure reason. How could this be?

I ended up going with the Guardian reviewer in The Nazi novelist you should read -
“I will not defend Hamsun's politics. He betrayed both his country and more importantly humanity in general and deserves every bit of the scorn that's been heaped upon him. Hamsun's writing, however, is another matter. Whether we like the man or not, it seems to me both foolish and pointless to continue ignoring the significance of Hamsun's work - if for no other reason than it's an important part of our literary evolution and denying this can do nothing but cloud our understanding of our ourselves as readers and writers.”

I am both glad and ashamed that I finished this novel. Like the book’s main character, I’m holding two competing thoughts in my head. I can’t unread it. I thought the book was brilliant.
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½
1 vote
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kjuliff | 22 other reviews | Feb 19, 2024 |
[Hunger] is about a starving writer who is, you guessed it!, hungry. I loved it. The main character is a young man trying to make it as a writer, but he is so poor and unable to find work that pays, that he is literally starving. Instead of writing, he spends much of his time looking for shelter and sustenance, or walking around trying to take his mind off of his hunger. In between, he works on his writing and sometimes comes up small sums of money, either for his work or by accident. He's obviously educated and I wonder why he had no support system at all. It's also clear that some of the people he interacts with have no idea just how close he is to starving to death.

Not much happens in this book. The main character interacts with a few people, but largely the book takes place inside his head and stomach. In some ways, when I reflect back on it, I have a hard time putting my finger on why I liked it so much. I think it's because it was honest, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and because the main character is both maddening and admirable.
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½
 
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japaul22 | 123 other reviews | Feb 16, 2024 |
What a rollercoaster! Reading this book took a lot out of me. Not because it's hard to read, but because the main character's (unnamed) constant changes in mood. He'll be riding on clouds at first, then he's acting as if he's the scourge of the earth. You really get caught up in it, and that all points back to the author's ability. The ending was a little abiguous to me, though. I don't like leaving my characters to an uncertain future.
 
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stargazerfish0 | 123 other reviews | Jan 13, 2024 |

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Associated Authors

Hermann Hesse Contributor
Gerry Bothmer Translator
G. A. Piebenga Translator, Afterword
Marijke Verheij Editor, Translator
Neeltje Wiersma Translator
Maria Hofman Translator
Reina Halbesma Translator
Freya Stob Translator
Sverre Lyngstad Translator, Introduction
Edvard Munch Cover artist
Amy van Marken Afterword, Editor
Paul Leith Cover artist
Cora Polet Translator
J. Sandmeier Translator
S. van Praag Translator
Paul Auster Introduction
Robert Bly Translator
W. W. Worster Translator
Edwin Björkman Introduction
Jo Nesbø Introduction
George Egerton Translator
W. H. Chong Cover designer
Siegfried Weibel Übersetzer
Sophie Angermann Translator
J. Sandmeier Übersetzer, Translator
W. Worster Translator
Brad Leithauser Introduction
S. Angermann Übersetzer
Joel Lehtonen Translator
Eva Seeberg Translator
Juhani Koskinen Translator
Froukje Hoekstra Translator
G.P. Bakker Translator
Mathilda Mann Translator
Tom Geddes Translator
Olli Virtanen Translator
Urbain De Wael Translator
Lauri Hirvensalo Translator
Aune Brotherus Translator
Erwin Magnus Afterword

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Works
323
Also by
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Members
14,053
Popularity
#1,637
Rating
4.0
Reviews
304
ISBNs
1,100
Languages
37
Favorited
110

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