Victoria is among Knut Hamsun’s best-loved works—an incisive study of the coercive power of economic and social forces that is also renowned for its innovative and psychologically probing narrative techniques. Hamsun stages in riveting detail the ill-fated relationship between the novel’s hero, Johannes, and the eponymous Victoria. When Victoria is driven to make a financially advantageous marriage to the son of a wealthy dignitary, the ground is laid for a subtly devastating conclusion that has haunted readers for well over a century.
