New Releases by Knut Hamsun

New edition of the 1929 English-language version of Nobel Prize winner Knut Hamsun's 1923 novel Det Siste Kapitel. Translated from the Norwegian by Arthur G. Chater. Chapter the Last is set in the Torahus sanatorium, where the sufferings of most of the patients are related to civilization. The novel has a group of central characters, but no distinct main character. Among the characters is "The Suicide," who entered the sanatorium following the discovery of his wife's infidelity and threatens constantly to take his own life. Another guest is the lovely Julie d''Espard. She enters into a relationship with the bogus Count Flemming and get pregnant. When Flemming disappears one day she turns to Daniel Utby, who runs a small farm near Torahus and who represents the novel's ideological norm. Chapter the Last is one of Hamsun's darkest novels. It was written at a time when he was much preoccupied by death. The novel is often compared with Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, which was published the year after.

Shallow Soil is a novel that examines the complex human interactions and struggles for power in a rural context. Hamsun depicts life in a small Norwegian village, where characters confront their own desires, frustrations, and longings. Through a psychological approach, the work reveals the tension between individual impulses and social expectations, as well as the difficulties of everyday life. Since its publication, Shallow Soil has been recognized for its innovative style and deep analysis of human psychology. Hamsun uses poetic and evocative language to explore the inner lives of his characters, giving them palpable humanity. The novel addresses themes such as alienation, identity, and the struggle for authenticity in a world that often seems hostile. The work remains relevant for its representation of human vulnerability and its critiques of oppressive social structures. By examining the dynamics of power in interpersonal relationships, Shallow Soil offers reflections on the search for meaning and belonging that resonate in contemporary society.

"Victoria - A Love Story" stands all by itself in the long series of works by Knut Hamsun. The chief male character, to be sure, bears the stamp of the author’s own personality; he, like his predecessors, clashes with society and its unwritten laws, but succeeds in adjusting himself without betraying his innermost being. Only in his love he suffers disaster. In poetic quality Victoria vies with Pan. We find long passages of lyric prose in both, the beauty of which is hard to surpass, but they have nothing in common with regard to the general atmosphere. Victoria is only a simple love story in prose. But what a prose where the author is at his best! Two youthful lovers are separated by the insuperable barriers of social conventions and economic circumstances. The young man, Johannes, is the son of a humble miller, Victoria the daughter of the proud master of the neighboring castle Hamsun intentionally leaves his readers somewhat in the dark about the exact social status of this old aristocrat. Johannes and Victoria have grown up together, have been playmates, and have come to love each other long before they reached adolescence. To save her lavish father from utter ruin, Victoria consents to marry a rich suitor. During the period of her engagement, she confesses to Johannes that she loves him, only to send him away on the next day because the whole thing is impossible, even though Johannes has made a man of himself and has already achieved fame as a poet. Bu then, at the eleventh hour fate seems to intervene …

New edition of J.S. Scott's 1925 English translation of Segelfoss Town (original title: Segelfoss By) by Knut Hamsun, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920. Segelfoss Town was first published in Norway in 1915 and is an independent continuation of Hamsun's Children of the Age, published two years earlier. The novel is a criticism of modern times, depicting the fall of the landed gentry and the rise of the working class. Segelfoss Town and its predecessor were the first of Hamsun's novels devoted to social issues. The two novels are described by Monika Zagar in Knut Hamsun: The Dark Side of Literary Brilliance (2009) as "much more than dry social analysis; indeed, they investigate, in rich novelistic form, the propagation and survival of a family."

"Hunger" portrays the irrationality of the human mind in an intriguing and sometimes humorous manner. The novel is loosely based on the author''s own impoverished life before his breakthrough in 1890. Set in late 19th-century Kristiania (now Oslo), "Hunger" recounts the adventures of a starving young man whose sense of reality is giving way to a delusionary existence on the darker side of a modern metropolis.

"L'amertume, la folie, la haine, le mépris, les dénigrements qui se donnent libre cours dans "Mystères" ne doivent pas nous faire oublier que Knut Hamsun était d'abord et avant tout un amoureux de la nature, un solitaire, un poète du désespoir. Il est capable de nous faire rire aux moments les plus inattendus — parfois même au beau milieu d'une scène d'amour passionnée — et pas toujours pour de bonnes raisons. Il peut, en un clin d'oeil, retourner une situation. De fait, il paraît souvent vouloir se libérer, s'extraire de sa propre peau. Mais si incisif que soit son humour, si mordantes que soient ses récriminations, cela ne nous empêche pas d'avoir le sentiment, la certitude, que c'est là un homme qui aime, un homme qui aime l'amour, et qui est condamné à ne jamais rencontrer une âme accordée à la sienne. Hamsun est vraiment ce qu'on pourrait appeler un aristocrate de l'esprit." — Henry Miller.

The Nobel Prize winner’s poetic, psychologically intense portrayal of love’s predicament in a class-bound society A Penguin Classic Set in a coastal village of late nineteenth-century Norway, Victoria follows two lovers whose yearnings are as powerful as the circumstances that conspire to thwart their romance. Johannes, a miller’s son turned poet, finds inspiration for his writing in his passionate devotion to Victoria, a daughter of the impoverished lord of the manor, who feels constrained by family loyalty to accept the wealthy young man of her father’s choice. Separated by class barriers and social pressure, the fated duo hurt and enthrall each other by turns as they move toward an emotional doom that neither will recognize until it is too late. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Recuperamos para el lector español la obra cumbre de este gran escritor noruego, marcado por la tragedia personal, ideológica y política. El protagonista de hambre no tiene nombre, no tiene edad, no se sabe nada de su origen o de su familia. Es un hombre sin pasado, arrancado de su contexto y lanzado al anonimato y la hostilidad de la gran ciudad.

Although the pieces in this collection are not all anti-American, most of them emphasize the strangeness and unpleasantness, as the author saw it, of life in what he called Yankeeland.".

The first complete English translation of the Nobel Prize-winner’s literary masterpiece A Penguin Classic Mysteries is the story of Johan Nilsen Nagel, a mysterious stranger who suddenly turns up in a small Norwegian town one summer—and just as suddenly disappears. Nagel is a complete outsider, a sort of modern Christ treated in a spirit of near parody. He condemns the politics and thought of the age, brings comfort to the “insulted and injured,” and gains the love of two women suggestive of the biblical Mary and Martha. But there is a sinister side of him: in his vest he carries a vial of prussic acid... The novel creates a powerful sense of Nagel''s stream of thought, as he increasingly withdraws into the torture chamber of his own subconscious psyche. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A new edition of Hamsun's charming novel, related in subject and characters to Under the Autumn Star (Sun & Moon Press).

Der reiche Handelsmann und ungekrönte König des Ortes, Ferdinand Mack, hat aus einer Laune heraus beschlossen, aus dem kleinen Postbeamten Benoni Hartvigsen einen wohlhabenden Kaufmann zu machen. Ein Bestandteil des Planes ist die Verlobung mit Rosa Barfod, die früh zu erkennen gibt, dass Benoni nicht ihre eigene Wahl ist. Eine ernste Krise zwischen den Verlobten steht bevor, als Rosas Jugendfreund Nikolai Arentsen nach beendetem Studium in seine Heimat zurückkehrt. Hamsun macht in 'Benoni' seelische Vorgänge sichtbar, die diesem Nordlandroman psychologisch-realistische Tiefe verleihen.

"In Under the Autumn Star, Nobel prize-winning author Knut Hamsun writes a novel magically permeated with the air and light of fall. The narrator, Knut Pedersen (Hamsun''s real name) first joins forces with Grindhusen, a man blessed with the faith that "something will turn up," and later with Lars Falkenberg, whose dubious talents include the tuning of pianos. Knut and Lars fetch up as workmen on the estate of Captain Falkenberg (no relation to Lars), with whose wife each falls or fancies himself in love - though this does not prevent either from doing "night duties" in other quarters. In time, Knut is laid off and, in futile pursuit of the woman with whom he is by now helplessly infatuated, finds himself sucked back into the city life he had fled."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

In their gossiping at the pumps the women express the poetry, the tawdriness and, above all, the sheer vitality of life in Hamsun s small costal town. A birth (where did those brown eyes come from?); a marriage (shotgun?); a death in strang circumstances (the victim flattened by a barrel of whale oil); the up and down career of the town s leading citizen and philanderer; the elderly spinster s preganancy; the inking of the steamship that is the town s pride and joy.

Pure comedy, this delightful novel follows an engaging reprobate who makes good, despite himself. Ove Rolandsen, a telegraph operator in an isolated fishing village in northern Norway, is a man of sudden passion, a cheerful rogue fond of girls and alchol. He constantly hatches ambitious schemes to the despair of his fiancée, Marie, housekeeper at the vicarage. When a plan to manufacture glue from fish- waste lands him in trouble, is his feckless career over or could fortune, for once, be on his side?