Hunger

by Knut Hamsun, Sverre Lyngstad (Translator), Sverre Lyngstad (Introduction), Sverre Lyngstad (Noted by)

Overview

A modernist masterpiece: the Nobel Prize winner’s first and most important novel

A Penguin Classic

First published in Norway in 1890, Hunger probes the depths of consciousness with frightening and gripping power. Contemptuous of novels of his time and what he saw as their stereotypical plots and empty characters, Knut Hamsun embarked on “an attempt to describe the strange, peculiar life of the mind, the mysteries of the nerves in a starving body.” 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 1,800 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 by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101144022
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/01/1998
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	402 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

IntroductionNote on the TranslationSelect BibliographyA Chronology of Knut HamsunHungerExplanatory Notes

Editorial Reviews

After reading Hunger, one can easily understand why Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Hunger should appeal to any reader who is interested in a masterpiece by one of this century's great novelists.

Detroit News James Goldwasser

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

 “The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun.” —Isaac Bashevis Singer

 “The classic novel of humiliation, even beyond Dostoyevsky . . . Lyngstad’s translation restores to the English-speaking reader one of the cold summits in modern prose literature.” —George Steiner

From the Publisher

Disturbing and difficult as this nightmarish novel is, it is a work of imaginative brilliance that resonates in our own day

Herald

Hamsun has the qualities that belong to the very great, a complete omniscience on human nature

Rebecca West

Hunger was published in 1890 and its power has not faded

London Review of Books

One of the most disturbing novels in existence

Time Out

Hunger is the crux of Hamsun's claims to mastery. This is the classic novel of humiliation, even beyond Dostoevsky

Observer

Hunger is undoubtedly one of the most important novels of the modern age. At last it has found a translator capable of doing justice to its immense power and complexity: Lyngstad's deserves to become the standard English version

Duncan McClean

An excellent new translation . . . this Hunger deserves to be the standard English version

Times Literary Supplement