Novel · A way to begin
Hunger
Sult
Knut Hamsun · 1890
Opening lines
Det var i den Tid, jeg gik omkring og sulted i Kristiania, denne forunderlige By, som ingen forlader, før han har fået Mærker af den . . . .
It was in the days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has left its marks on him...
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
A young nameless writer wanders through Kristiania, starving, living only on the occasional sale of an article to a newspaper. He pawns his belongings, pawns his waistcoat out of shame in a shop where no one knows him, then gives almost all the money to a beggar. He lies for no reason to strangers, refuses food that is offered to him, follows two women in the street and names one of them Ylajali. As his body weakens, his thoughts race, and he still strives to keep up appearances.
Context
An extract from the book appeared without the author's name in November 1888 in the Danish review Ny Jord, and the whole novel in 1890; its author revised it in 1899, 1907 and 1916. The Nobel Foundation regards it as the first truly modern novel of Norwegian literature; it is also regarded as the starting point of twentieth-century modernism, under the influence of Dostoevsky. Edmond Bayle translated it into French as early as 1895, George Egerton into English in 1899; Régis Boyer gave a new translation, with a preface by André Gide.
Who it is for
A short novel, without a plot, quick to read but gruelling, translated into French since 1895.
Prizes and reception
The book of its author's breakthrough, read everywhere as one of the sources of the modern novel in Europe.
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