Knut Hamsun

Privé-detective Max Winter gaat op verzoek van de moeder op zoek naar de onbekende die het hart ontving van haar verongelukte dochter.

It looks to be a fine year for berries, yes; whortleberries, crowberries, and fintocks. A man can't live on berries; true enough. But it is good to have them growing all about, and a kindly thing to see. And many a thirsty and hungry man's been glad to find them.

The epic novel of man and nature that won its author the Nobel Prize in Literature—the first new English translation since the novel's original publication ninety years ago When it was first published in 1917, Growth of the Soil was immediately recognized as a masterpiece. Ninety years later it remains a transporting literary experience. In the story of Isak, who leaves his village to clear a homestead and raise a family amid the untilled tracts of the Norwegian back country, Knut Hamsun evokes the elemental bond between humans and the land. Newly translated by the acclaimed Hamsun scholar Sverre Lyngstad, Hamsun's novel is a work of preternatural calm, stern beauty, and biblical power—and the crowning achievement of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

"Early one morning, less than a month after her eighteenth birthday, Alexandrina Victoria is roused from bed with the news that her uncle William IV has died and she is now Queen of England. The men who run the country have doubts about whether this sheltered young woman, who stands less than five feet tall, can rule the greatest nation in the world. Surely she must rely on her mother and her venal advisor, Sir John Conroy, or her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, who are all too eager to relieve her of the burdens of power. The young queen is no puppet, however. She has very definite ideas about the kind of queen she wants to be, and the first thing is to choose her name. Everyone keeps saying she is destined to marry her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, but Victoria found him dull and priggish when they met three years ago. She is quite happy being queen with the help of her prime minister, Lord Melbourne, who may be old enough to be her father but is the first person to take her seriously. Drawing on Victoria s diaries, which she first started reading when she was a student at Cambridge University, as well as her own brilliant gifts for history and drama, Daisy Goodwin, author of the bestselling novels The American Heiress and The Fortune Hunter as well as creator and writer of the new PBS/Masterpiece drama Victoria, brings the young queen richly to life."--Amazon.com

Annotation

The Wanderer, which consists of two closely related novels, Under the Autumn Star and On Muted Strings, has been acclaimed as one of Knut Hamsun's finest works. The narrator, Knut Pedersen (Hamsun's real name), is an unsimple character in search of the simple life, which he hopes to attain by wandering round the Norwegian countryside doing such work as he can find. His quest is continually frustrated, not least by his susceptibility to the wives and daughters of successive employers. In Under the Autumn Star he joins forces first with Grindhusen, a man blessed with the faith that "something will turn up"; later with Lars Falkenberg, whose dubious talents include the tuning of pianos. Knut and Lars end up as workmen on the estate of a certain Captain Falkenberg (no relation), with whose wife each falls in love. In due course, Knut is laid off and, in futile pursuit of the woman with whom by now he is helplessly infatuated, eventually finds himself sucked back into the city he once fled. "A wanderer plays on muted strings," explains Knut, now six years older, "when he reaches the age of two score years and ten." Among this sequel's qualities is the poignancy with which it conveys that sense of aging. Both novels show Hamsun at the height of his powers: lyrical and passionate, ironic yet deeply humane, master of one of the most original prose styles in modern literature, brilliantly translated here by Oliver and Gunnvor Stallybrass.

Joining previous Hamsun novels published by Sun & Moon Press (Victoria and Wayfarers), The Women at the Pump, originally published in Norway in 1920, reveals the narrative power of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist. The women at the pump in Hamsun's small Norwegian coastal town are seldom short of something to talk about: scandals of adultery and illegitimate children, class tensions and hostility, religious disputes, and a mail robbery involving some of the town's most significant figures. All serve as a backdrop to the activities of Oliver Andersen and his large family he and his wife contrive to raise despite the growing suspicions that a mysterious accident at sea deprived him of more than a leg.

Translated for the first time into English, The Wild Chorus (Det vilde Kor) was the only book of poetry published by Knut Hamsun (1859-1952). Its publication in 1904 came in the turbulent decade following the success of his novels Hunger and Mysteries. Hounded across Europe by a female stalker, unhappily married and later divorced, drinking heavily and bankrupted by his gambling, Hamsun returned to his childhood home at Hamarøy in the far north of Norway. There he lived alone in a turf hut and composed many of the poems in this collection, inspired by the arctic summer, the forests, mountains and fjords. The book resulted in a revival of lyric poetry in Norway, with these poems to this day continuing to be read and admired. More at www.humansidepress.com