Hunger

INTRODUCTION BY JO NESBO
AFTERWORD BY PAUL AUSTER

Nineteenth-century Kristiania is an unforgiving place, and work is thin on the ground. Roaming the streets of Norway's capital, a penniless young writer searches for inspiration whilst trying desperately to make ends meet. Driven to extraordinary lengths, sleeping under the stars with his stomach growling, the writer's behaviour becomes increasingly irrational and his world spirals into chaos.

Hunger was Knut Hamsun's first novel and earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920. A disturbing and darkly humorous masterpiece of existential fiction, Hunger anticipated and influenced some of the twentieth century's most acclaimed writers including Camus, Kafka and Fante.

Review: Hunger is the crux of Hamsun's claims to mastery. This is the classic novel of humiliation, even beyond Dostoevsky * * Observer * *
One of the most disturbing novels in existence * * Time Out * *
An excellent new translation . . . this Hunger deserves to be the standard English version * * Times Literary Supplement * *
Hamsun has the qualities that belong to the very great, a complete omniscience on human nature -- Rebecca West
Disturbing and difficult as this nightmarish novel is, it is a work of imaginative brilliance that resonates in our own day * * Herald * *
Hunger is undoubtedly one of the most important novels of the modern age. At last it has found a translator capable of doing justice to its immense power and complexity: Lyngstad's deserves to become the standard English version -- Duncan McClean