Category — Knut Hamsun

The most popular Scandinavian fiction books at amazon.com (May, 2008):

1. Kristin Lavransdatter (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Sigrid Undset (Author), Tiina Nunnally (Editor, Translator), Brad Leithauser (Introduction)

2. Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie (Perennial Classics) by Ole Edvart Rolvaag (Author)

3. The Return: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Hakan Nesser (Author)

4. Four Major Plays: A Doll’s House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder (Oxford World’s Classics) by Henrik Ibsen (Author), James McFarlane (Introduction, Translator), Jens Arup (Translator)

5. Four Great Plays of Henrik Ibsen: A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder (Enriched Classics Series) by Henrik Ibsen (Author)

6. Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg (Author)

7. Hunger: A Novel by Knut Hamsun (Author), Paul Auster (Introduction), Robert Bly (Translator)

8. Unspoken: A Mystery (Inspector Anders Knutas Mysteries) by Mari Jungstedt (Author), Tiina Nunnally (Translator)

9. An Enemy of the People; The Wild Duck; Rosmersholm (Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford University Press).) by Henrik Ibsen (Author), James McFarlane (Translator)

10. Growth of the Soil (Penguin Classics) by Knut Hamsun (Author), Brad Leithauser (Introduction), Sverre Lyngstad (Translator)

Knut Hamsun was a great Norwegian novelist, dramatist, poet, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He is perhaps best known for Growth of the Soil, Hunger, and Mysteries. These are relatively “heavy” and serious books, and they have contributed much to making serious and hard to read part of Hamsun’s image as an author. (You can read more about Knut Hamsun’s books at http://www.leserglede.com/.)

However, Knut Hamsun has many other qualities as a writer as well. He had a great sense of humor and irony, and he was socially engaged as well as a great observer of social change. A number of his writings display these characteristics, thus pointing to a “lighter”, and perhaps more easily accessible side of Knut Hamsun.

Segelfoss Town is one of these books. It is a wonderful, light novel, and my personal favorite among Hamsun’s books.

Segelfoss Town is the continuation of Children of the Age, but can be read indepent of it. Now Tobias Holmengrå, the entrepreneurial capitalist, is the big guy in Segelfoss. The lieutenant is nothing but a distant memory now; money and the struggle of the classes rule the day. Changing times, business cycles, and events large and small create problems for the city and even its richest citizen.

This is, in my humble opinion, an even more interesting book than “Children of the Age”, and full of black humor, fascinating interactions among the wide gallery of characters in the book, and with great observations about the dynamics of the changing circumstances.

While easier to read than most of Hamsun’s other books, this book still reveals the depth of Hamsun’s ability to observe, and is written in a beautiful, extremely well crafted language. Great fun, and a great experience, as well as food for thought.

I enjoy reading Knut Hamsun. He writes elegantly and beautiful, and I like his sense of humor. Pan is about Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, living in a hunting cabin up in the Northern part of Norway, along with his dog, Aesop. He lives not far from the village Sirius, and interacts with people there. Then something happens which turns his life upside down.

Pan is a wonderful Hamsun book. Otto Weineger claimed it was the most beautiful book ever written. In Pan, Hamsun is concerned with the beauty of nature and our relationship to it. His descriptions are beautiful. His mastery of language, and his very conscious use of it, is intruiging. He uses language to underscore what is happening. For instance, when Glahn is alone, his sentences are long, drawn out, but when he talks to women, his sentences are short, distinct, intense. In addition, the story in Pan is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking.

Pan, in my humbe opinion, is one of the most interesting books written by Hamsun, a true masterpiece. At the center of the book is the eternal battle of the sexes. The book is full of pure poetry and “lyric outbursts”. Pan is also, deservedly, one of the most widely known works by Knut Hamsun.