Knut Hamsun – författare

»Den moderna prosans fader.« | ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER»Hamsuns genombrottsroman Svält från 1890 är än i dag lika drabbande som en blixt från blå himmel. Nu finns originalversionen i en glimrande svensk översättning av Henrik Petersen.« | MIKAEL VAN REIS, GPSommaren 1888 anländer Knut Hamsun till Köpenhamn, dåtidens kulturcentrum i Norden. Desillusionerad - euforisk - river han manuskriptet som skulle göra hans litterära karriär. Han stannar i staden, för nu vet han: Hamsun ska skriva sig fram till »det som ingen ännu känner«, till något litteraturen aldrig sett.»Nerverna« är på modet detta sekelskifte, men ingen text från tiden, och ingen senare, liknar Hamsuns Svält - i dag en lika omistlig klassiker som Kafkas romaner, Dostojevskijs Brott och straff eller Goethes Unge Werther.Henrik Petersens hyllade svenska översättning av Svält är den enda som gjorts av originalversionen av romanen från 1890.KNUT HAMSUN [1859 -1952] var en norsk författare. En av 1900-talets mest inflytelserika stilister, av många ansedd som den moderna romanens skapare. Debutromanen Svält var en av Franz Kafkas viktigaste inspirationskällor. Stilen i Svält är en föregångare även till den »medvetandeström« som kom att förknippas med James Joyce och Virginia Woolf. 1920 mottog Hamsun Nobelpriset i litteratur.»Det är en fantastisk utgåva. Jag rekommenderar den till alla som den bästa utgåvan som är utgiven i Norden, ja över huvud taget." | STÅLE DINGSTAD, professor vid Universitetet i Oslo och Hamsun-forskare»Alienation i den moderna storstaden, identitetskriser och jagupplösning, våldsamma djupdykningar i det omedvetna, ja rentav nedmontering av hela föreställningen att konsten och litteraturen bör avbilda verkligheten. Alltsammans finns redan i Hamsuns Svält.« | THURE STENSTRÖM, SvD»Varför förför Hamsun mig till den grad? För det första därför att hans prosa är före gott och ont, före arvsynden. Den är skamlöst lycklig, oskuldsfull. För det andra, därför att den har ett ständigt driv, den vilar inte, den halvsover inte, den går inte på rutin, den observerar alla detaljer och den hittar på nya.« | THEODOR KALLIFATIDES»Det är en svenska som utan spår av norska ger stark språkidentitet: den talar renaste hamsunska.« | SIGRID COMBÜCHEN, SYDSVENSKAN»Jag tror faktiskt att Henrik Petersen lyckats åstadkomma en perfekt översättning.« | HANNA NORDENHÖK, HD»Och jag, uppvuxen med två andra uttolkningar, en från 1937 och en annan från 1959, måste säga att detta är den ultimata. Råare och renare. Hårdare och härligare. Mörkare och mönstergillare.« | JAN KARLSSON, CORREN»Aldrig har någon varit mer förtjänt av Nobelpriset.« | THOMAS MANN

'When the snow water had broken crevices open in the mountain a shot or even just a sharp cry was enough to tear loose a huge slab and send it toppling.' Lieutenant Thomas Glahn spends a summer in northern Norway, where the midnight sun triggers a short but intense release of energies. Living out of a rudimentary hut on the edge of the forest, he pursues a solitary existence, hunting, fishing, and engaging intermittently with the inhabitants of the nearby coastal village. Among these is Edvarda, daughter of the wealthy local trader Herr Mack. Their mutual attraction rapidly develops into an erotic fascination shot through with suspicions and jealousies; a series of fraught encounters culminates in violent actions with unforeseen consequences. First published in 1894, Pan was an immediate success and remains a classic of Norwegian literature. It embodies many of the distinctive features of Hamsun's early works, in particular a rejection of psychological stereotypes and a style infused by what Hamsun called a 'poetry of the nerves'. Terence Cave's new translation restores the power and virtuosity of Hamsun's original and includes an illuminating introduction and explanatory notes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'It was at the time when I was wandering around hungry in Kristiania, that strange city no one leaves before it has set its mark on them...' Hunger is the first-person story of a young man desperately trying to establish himself in the city as a writer, living in shabby lodgings where he can seldom afford to pay the rent, eating almost nothing, and engaging spasmodically and manically with landladies, eccentric elderly men, policemen, shopkeepers, pawnbrokers, and others on the way. He wanders around the streets, sits on benches trying to write, spends a night locked in a pitch-dark police cell, thinks, slides into remarkably inventive reveries, speculates on his mental health, his ethical comportment, his relation to the divinity, the topics he might write about. The traces of a consistent narrative logic are uncertain and blurred; the voice of the narrator keeps shifting between pragmatic appraisal of his situation, wild fantasies, manic outbursts, anger, and despair. This is a story that lies on the threshold of modernism, anticipating many of the dislocations that narrative will be subject to in the decades to come.This new translation seeks to restore the startling freshness and epidermal unease of Hamsun's breakthrough story of 1890. It remains faithful to the style and voice of the text, the shifts of tense, the indirect free style, and the constant changes of register as the inner monologue moves between poetic sensitivity, wild fantasies, manic outbursts, and hyperbolic emotion. Tore Rem's introduction provides an updated and fresh account of the genesis of Hunger, its book history and its reception. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A miller's son, Johannes, falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy landowner, Victoria. The novel follows them through adolescence, as Johannes struggles with the social hierarchy and becomes a successful author, and Victoria is forced into marrying Otto, a lieutenant, to save the troubled family economy.A lyrical excursion into unconsummated love, love that is described memorably as 'Blood and Blossoms'.

This is the story of Isak, a worker of the land, with its roots in man's deepest myths about the struggle to cultivate the land and make it fertile. Sweeping and panoramic, the story moves at the pace of the passing seasons and with the growth of the crops on which the characters' lives depend.Hamsun's themes of individual freedom, and the fundamental human need to reconcile man with the natural world, speak even more resonantly than when the novel was first published.

The midnight sun illumines more than fishing and fjords in this remote northern Norwegian village. In fact, half-baked schemes and hilarity abound. Big Ove Rolandsen, telegraph operator, mad scientist, and local Casanova, trades wits, fists, and kisses with a host of quirky neighbors. He serenades the curate's wife and fights a drunken giant, but taking on Trader Mack, the town's fish-glue magnate, is a more difficult matter. Knut Hamsun, author of the acclaimed Hunger and winner of the 1920 Nobel Prize for Literature, renders the dreams and dramas of these townsfolk with a delightfully light touch. Robert Bly has written that Hamsun "has a magnifying glass on his eye, like a jeweler's," and Dreamers gleams like a perfect, semi-precious stone.