Hunger & Growth of the Soil

Hunger was first released in Norway in 1890 and it has since become a terrifying and compelling literary classic. Knut Hamsun set out on """"an attempt to convey the unusual peculiar life of the mind the mysteries of the nerves in a famished body"""" after becoming dissatisfied with the novels of his period and what he perceived as their stereotyped plots and empty characters. It represents an astonishing rupture with Western literary and humanistic traditions much like Dostoyevsky's writings.</br></br>Growth of the Soil was quickly acclaimed as a masterpiece after its 1917 debut. It is still a moving literary experience 90 years later. Knut Hamsun depicts the fundamental connection between people and the earth in his tale of Isak who leaves his village to establish a homestead and raise a family amidst the tilled fields of the Norwegian back country. The novel by Hamsun recently translated by renowned Hamsun scholar Sverre Lyngstad is the pinnacle work of one of the finest writers of the 20th century and a masterpiece of supernatural serenity stern beauty and biblical majesty.""