Knut Hamsun (1858–1952) was a Norwegian novelist, poet,
and playwright hailed by many as one of the founders of modern
literature. Born to a poor peasant family in central Norway, he
worked as a schoolmaster, sheriff’s assistant, laborer, store
clerk, farmhand, and streetcar conductor in both Scandinavia and
America before establishing himself as a successful playwright and
novelist. His first novel, Hunger (1890), was an immediate critical
success; he went on to write the novels Mysteries (1892), Pan
(1894), Victoria (1898), and The Growth of the Soil (1917), the
last of which earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920.
Sverre Lyngstad (1922–2011; translator, introducer, notes)
was a scholar and translator of Norwegian literature and
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative
Literature at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He translated
five of Knut Hamsun’s works for Penguin Classics—Hunger (1890),
Mysteries (1892), Pan (1894), Victoria (1898), and The Growth of
the Soil (1917)—and was honored by the King of Norway with the St.
Olav Medal and with the Knight’s Cross, First Class, of the Royal
Norwegian Order of Merit.
By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
“Knut Hamsun’s writing is magical, his sentences are glowing, he
could write about anything and make it alive.” —Karl Ove
Knausgaard, The New York Times Book Review
“This is no museum piece redolent with the dust of literary
respectability. It is as immediate and haunting as last night’s
dreams or nightmares.” —The New York Times
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