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Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed

Hunger

by Knut Hamsun

1890

Novel

Stream-of-Consciousness, Psychological

Set in Christiania (now called Oslo), Norway, the first novel by the prolific Hamsun is an autobiographical account of a destitute young writer who is radically and willfully estranged from society. Organized into four sections, the book focuses on minute details of the anonymous narrator's solitary existence from one autumn through winter to the possibility of spring.

Wandering the streets with grandiose ambitions to write an opus on Philosophical Consciousness, the indigent narrator impetuously pawns his waistcoat to assist a beggar. He follows a strange woman whom he privately calls “Ylayali.” He moves out of his boarding house and ends up sleeping in the woods. Though he sabotages his own attempt to get a job in a grocery, the first section concludes triumphantly, with payment of 10 kroner for a newspaper article.

Part 2 reverts to a mood of desperation and to the narrator's introverted fantasies. Registering as a vagrant with the police, he spends a bizarre night in jail. After his release, he is disappointed in his appeals to a clergyman and to friends. The section concludes with an acquaintance pawning a watch for him.

When the narrator tries to beg a candle, the clerk mistakenly thinks he has already paid for it and even gives him change. Later, he proudly returns the money. “Ylayali” pursues him, but he spurns her affection.

While trying to write a blasphemous play, the narrator observes cruelty within the ostensibly respectable family that runs his latest boardinghouse. After being evicted, he takes a job on a ship and prepares to depart for England. It is not clear whether the ending is auspicious or ominous, liberation or flight.

The novel's ambiguity is compounded by filtering everything through the febrile consciousness of a manic-depressive whose unreliability is manifest but who is also capable of great charm. His deliberately cultivated hunger, which marks him as an artist, sharpens his sensitivity and further alienates him from a complacent society of hypocritical thieves.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Hamsun, Knut. "Hunger." Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed, edited by Editors of Salem Press, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=6CR_0249.
APA 7th
Hamsun, K. (2015). Hunger. In E. Salem Press (Ed.), Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Hamsun, Knut. "Hunger." Edited by Editors of Salem Press. Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.