Knut Hamsun was the most influential writer of the late nineteenth century, creating a new literary style and a new literary type, the alienated outsider (typified in Mysteries), which became defining elements of modernism. In Growth of the Soil he created a novel of Biblical power, while Dreamers shows the gentler comic side of his imagination. Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920 and died in 1952.

Knut Hamsun was the most influential writer of the late nineteenth century, creating a new literary style and a new literary type, the alienated outsider (typified in Mysteries), which became defining elements of modernism. In Growth of the Soil he created a novel of Biblical power, while Dreamers shows the gentler comic side of his imagination. Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920 and died in 1952.