Knut Hamsun - Nobel Prize in Literature, 1920 (22 books)

KNUT HAMSUN (1859-1952) was a Norwegian novelist, dramatist, and poet who was awarded the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his monumental work, Growth of the Soil."

Considered one of the most influential and innovative literary stylists of the past century, he pioneered psychological literature with techniques of stream of consciousness and interior monologue, and influenced authors such as Mann, Kafka, Gorky, Hesse, and 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. The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun."

Hamsun first received wide acclaim with HUNGER (1890), a semi-autobiographical novel that describes a young writer's descent into near madness as a result of hunger and poverty in the Norwegian capital. To many, the novel presaged the writings of Franz Kafka and other twentieth-century novelists with its internal monologue and bizarre logic. A theme to which Hamsun often returned is that of the asocial, perpetual wanderer, an itinerant stranger (often the narrator) who shows up and insinuates himself into the life of small rural communities. This wanderer theme is central to the novels MYSTERIES (1892), PAN (1894), UNDER THE AUTUMN STAR (1906), and others.

Hamsun's work is determined by a deep aversion to civilization and the belief that man's only fulfilment lies with the soil. He saw mankind and nature united in a strong, sometimes mystical bond, and his prose often contains rapturous depictions of the natural world. This primitivism (and its concomitant distrust of all things modern) found its fullest expression in GROWTH OF THE SOIL (1917), which was immediately recognized as an epic masterpiece. In the story of Isak, who leaves his village to clear a homestead and raise a family amid the untilled tracts of the Norwegian back country, Hamsun evokes the elemental bond between humans and the land.

Consistent to the end in his antipathy to modern Anglo-American culture (he once described the U.S. as "a mulatto studfarm"), Hamsun was a prominent advocate of Germany and other fascist regimes and supported the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II. Days after Hitler's death, Hamsun wrote a eulogy for him, saying "He was a warrior, a warrior for mankind, and a prophet of the gospel of justice for all nations." After the war Hamsun was imprisoned as a traitor, sentenced to the loss of his property, temporarily put under psychiatric observation, and spent his last years in poverty.

Hamsun's work remains popular to this day. In 2009, a Norwegian biographer stated, "We can’t help loving him, though we have hated him all these years. . . That's our Hamsun trauma. He's a ghost that won’t stay in the grave."


The following books are in PDF or ePUB format as indicated:

* DREAMERS (Knopf, 1921). Translated by W. W. Worster. -- PDF

* GROWTH OF THE SOIL (Penguin, 2007). Translated by Sverre Lyngstad. -- ePUB

* GROWTH OF THE SOIL (Knopf, 1971 / Adelaide, 2014). Translated by W. W. Worster. -- PDF + ePUB

* HUNGER (Adelaide, 2014). Translated by George Egerton. -- ePUB

* HUNGER (FSG, 1998). Translated by Robert Bly with an Introduction by Paul Auster. -- PDF + ePUB

* HUNGER (Penguin, 1998). Translated by Sverre Lyngstad. -- ePUB

* KNUT HAMSUN REMEMBERS AMERICA: Essays and Stories (Missouri, 2003). Translated and edited by Richard Nelson Current. -- PDF

* LOOK BACK ON HAPPINESS (Adelaide, 2014). Translated by Paula Wiking. -- ePUB

* MOTHWISE (Gyldendal, 1921). Translated by W. W. Worster. -- PDF

* MYSTERIES (Knopf, 1927). Translated by Arthur G. Chater. -- PDF

* MYSTERIES (Penguin, 2001). Translated by Sverre Lyngstad. -- ePUB

* ON OVER-GROWN PATHS (Eriksson, 1967). Translated by Carl L. Anderson. -- PDF

* PAN (FSG, 1956). Translated by James W. McFarlane. -- PDF

* PAN (Barnes & Noble Classics, 2011). Translated by W. W. Worster. -- ePUB

* THE RING IS CLOSED (Souvenir, 2010). Translated by Robert Ferguson. -- ePUB

* THE ROAD LEADS ON (Adelaide, 2014). Translated by Eugene Gay-Tifft. -- ePUB

* ROSA (Sun & Moon Classics, 1997). Translated by Sverre Lyngstad. -- PDF

* SHALLOW SOIL (Knopf, 1921 / Adelaide, 2014). Translated by Carl Christian Hyllested. -- PDF + ePUB

* UNDER THE AUTUMN STAR (Adelaide, 2014). Translated by W. W. Worster. -- ePUB

* VICTORIA (Penguin, 2005). Translated by Sverre Lyngstad. -- ePUB

* A WANDERER PLAYS ON MUTED STRINGS (Adelaide, 2014). Translated by W. W. Worster. -- ePUB

* WANDERERS (Gyldendal, 1922). Translated by W. W. Worster. -- PDF