Knut Hamsun

Published in Norway in 1912, The Last Joy (Den Siste Glaede) appears at an important transition point in Hamsun's career, as he moved any from his intense observations of individual characters to focus on a broader canvas of small town and farm life social units of the Norwegian culture. If Hunger (1890) represents the epitome Hamsun's focus on the individual, his works of the late teens and 1920s, particularly Growth of the Soil (1917) and Women...

This is the story of Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, an ex-military man, who lives alone in a hut in the woods with his faithful dog Aesop. Glahn's life changes when he meets Edvarda, a merchant's daughter from a nearby town, with whom he quickly falls in love. While they feel strongly for each other, they do not truly understand the other's perspective and tragedy soon befalls the lovers. Edvarda is not entirely faithful to Glahn, and he is profoundly affected...

First published in 1903, and translated into English for the first time by the noted Norwegian scholar Sverre Lyngstad, In Wonderland is a diaristic account of a trip that author Knut Hamsun took to Russia at the turn of the twentieth century. This detailed travelogue is a rich and detailed portrait of the people and culture of Russia, and is filled with the trademark style and keen observations of the author of such classics as Hunger, Mysteries,...

"In this Norwegian saga of restlessness, Hamsun presents young Edevart, a headstrong boy ill at ease with books, but fiercely self-determined and eager to escape his poor village of Polden. He becomes a close friend of August, a man-orphan, rootless, who sings fantastic tales of a wondrous world. In their years of seafaring, peddling, and raucous-raising--sometimes together, sometimes separated--Edevart grows in understanding, becoming a cunning businessman,...

The antics of Ove Rolandsen, telegraph operator and local Casanova in a fishing village in Norway. He serenades the curate's wife, fights a drunken giant, but taking on the town's fish-glue magnate is a more difficult matter. By the winner of the 1920 Nobel Prize for Literature.