Hunger by Knut Hamsun - Books

Hunger

By Knut Hamsun Biographies & Memoirs 27/02/2025

Published in 1890, “Hunger” (“Sult” in Norwegian) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Knut Hamsun based on his many unhappy experiences in Norway’s capital city of Christiania. "Hunger" was one of the first modern psychological novels in world literature.

Told in the first person, it is the story of a young writer of exceptional sensibility, who, stripped of all of his property and without any reliable means of support, is about to perish from extreme hunger. The book contains little action in the traditional sense. With the exception of the story of a few attempts to secure employment and the account of a brief encounter with a lady of the middle class, the text consists almost exclusively of reports of the narrator’s mental life during periods of starvation.
The unnamed narrator of this plotless episodic work is an introspective young man whose hunger to succeed as a writer matches his intense physical hunger. He lacks human contact and at times seems demented. Although he has occasional hunger-induced hallucinations, he neither feels sorry for himself nor tries to rectify his situation.

The book’s impulsive, lyrical style marked a clear departure from the then-prevalent social realism and had an electrifying effect on European writers.

Born in 1859 in Lom, Gudbrandsdalen, Norway, Knut Hamsun believed writers should write about the human mind. He wrote psychological works that included running inner monolog. Hamsun wrote plays, poetry, essays, short stories, over twenty novels, and a travelogue. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920 for "Growth of the Soil".