Shallow Soil

by Knut Hamsun

Overview

In the autumn of 1888 a Danish magazine published a few chapters of an autobiographical novel which instantly created the greatest stir in literary circles throughout Europe. At that time Ibsen, Björnson, Brandes, Strindberg, and other Scandinavian writers were at the height of their cosmopolitan fame, and it was only natural that the reading world should keep in close touch with the literary production of the North. But even the professional star-gazers, who maintained a vigilant watch on northern skies, had never come across the name of Knut Hamsun. He was unknown; whatever slight attention his earlier struggles for recognition may have attracted was long ago forgotten. And now he blazed forth overnight, with meteoric suddenness, with a strange, fantastic, intense brilliance which could only emanate from a star of the first magnitude.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781514711408
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	06/25/2015
Pages:	126
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.27(d)

About the Author

Knut Hamsun (August 4, 1859 - February 19, 1952) was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul.

Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to the subject, perspective and environment. He published more than 20 novels, a collection of poetry, some short stories and plays, a travelogue, and some essays.

The young Hamsun objected to realism and naturalism. He argued that the main object of modern literature should be the intricacies of the human mind, that writers should describe the "whisper of blood, and the pleading of bone marrow". Hamsun is considered the "leader of the Neo-Romantic revolt at the turn of the [20th] century", with works such as Hunger (1890), Mysteries (1892), Pan (1894), and Victoria (1898). His later works-in particular his "Nordland novels"-were influenced by the Norwegian new realism, portraying everyday life in rural Norway and often employing local dialect, irony, and humour.

Hamsun is considered to be "one of the most influential and innovative literary stylists of the past hundred years" (ca. 1890-1990). He pioneered psychological literature with techniques of stream of consciousness and interior monologue, and influenced authors such as Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Maxim Gorky, Stefan Zweig, Henry Miller, Hermann Hesse, and Ernest Hemingway. Isaac Bashevis Singer called Hamsun "the father of the modern school of literature in his every aspect-his subjectiveness, his fragmentariness, his use of flashbacks, his lyricism.