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
“Growth of the Soil was a worldwide sensation . . . and almost from the day of publication there were rumors that Hamsun would win the Nobel Prize. . . . Singer admitted to being ‘hypnotized’ by him; Hesse called him his favorite writer; Hemingway recommended his novels to Scott Fitzgerald; Gide compared him to Dostoyevsky, but believed Hamsun was ‘perhaps even more subtle.’ The list of those who loved his sly, anarchic voice is long.” —The New Yorker
“Growth of the Soil impresses me as among the very greatest novels I have ever read. It is wholly beautiful; it is saturated with wisdom and humor and tenderness.” —H. G. Wells
“The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun.” —Isaac Bashevis Singer
Growth of the Soil (Markens Grøde) is the novel by Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun which won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. The essential elements of this novel are expressed in the words of the English translator W.W. Worster in his footnote in December 1920: 'It is the life story of a man in the wilds, the genesis and gradual development of a homestead, the unit of humanity, in the unfilled, uncleared tracts that still remain in the Norwegian Highlands. It is an epic of earth; the history of a microcosm. Its dominant note is one of patient strength and simplicity; the mainstay of its working is the tacit, stern, yet loving alliance between Nature and the Man who faces her himself, trusting to himself and her for the physical means of life, and the spiritual contentment with life which she must grant if he be worthy. . .The story is epic in its magnitude, in its calm, steady progress and unhurrying rhythm, in its vast and intimate humanity. The author looks upon his characters with a great, all-tolerant sympathy, aloof yet kindly, as a god.' (Introduction by Wikipedia)
Growth of the Soil (Markens Grøde) is the novel by Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun which won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. The essential elements of this novel are expressed in the words of the English translator W.W. Worster in his footnote in December 1920: 'It is the life story of a man in the wilds, the genesis and gradual development of a homestead, the unit of humanity, in the unfilled, uncleared tracts that still remain in the Norwegian Highlands. It is an epic of earth; the history of a microcosm. Its dominant note is one of patient strength and simplicity; the mainstay of its working is the tacit, stern, yet loving alliance between Nature and the Man who faces her himself, trusting to himself and her for the physical means of life, and the spiritual contentment with life which she must grant if he be worthy. . .The story is epic in its magnitude, in its calm, steady progress and unhurrying rhythm, in its vast and intimate humanity. The author looks upon his characters with a great, all-tolerant sympathy, aloof yet kindly, as a god.' (Introduction by Wikipedia)
