Hunger (Hamsun novel)

Lore & Background

Set in late 19th-century Kristiania (now Oslo), the novel 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. While he vainly tries to maintain an outer shell of respectability, his mental and physical decay are recounted in detail. His ordeal, enhanced by his inability or unwillingness to pursue a professional career, which he deems unfit for someone of his abilities, is pictured in a series of encounters which Hamsun himself described as 'a series of analyses'. The novel's first-person protagonist, an unnamed vagrant with intellectual leanings, probably in his late twenties, wanders the streets of Kristiania in pursuit of nourishment. Over four episodes he meets a number of more or less mysterious persons, the most notable being Ylajali, a young woman with whom he engages in a mild degree of physical intimacy. He exhibits a self-created code of chivalry, giving money and clothes to needy children and vagrants, not eating food given to him, and turning himself in for stealing. Essentially self-destructive, he thus falls into traps of his own making, and with a lack of food, warmth and basic comfort, his body turns slowly to ruin.

Reader's Guide

Hunger encompasses two of Hamsun's literary and ideological motifs: his insistence that the intricacies of the human mind ought to be the main object of modern literature, and his depreciation of modern, urban civilization. Hamsun's own literary program, to describe 'the whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow', is thoroughly manifest in Hunger. In many ways, the protagonist displays traits reminiscent of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment; the author Fyodor Dostoevsky being one of Hamsun's main influences. The influence of naturalist authors such as Émile Zola is apparent in the novel, as is his rejection of the realist tradition. Disputes exist over the quality of these translations: Lyngstad called Bly's translation a 'betrayal', while others note Egerton's translation has withstood time well.

Did You Know?

• The novel's protagonist nearly eats his own pencil and his finger while overwhelmed by hunger.