Knut Hamsun

Knut Hamsun was a Norwegian novelist, born on 4 August 1859 in Vågå and raised in northern Norway. He left school early, worked at many jobs, and spent time in America before his breakthrough with Hunger in 1890. That book, with its restless first-person narrator, helped open the way for the modern psychological novel, and writers such as Kafka, Joyce and Hemingway are often linked to his influence. His later work ranged from the lyrical Pan to the large, earthy Growth of the Soil, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Hamsun lived a long life and died on 19 February 1952. His reputation is troubled by his support for Nazi Germany during the Second World War, for which he was tried in Norway after 1945. Readers today still return to his early novels for their intense inner life and fresh style, while debating how to separate the art from the man.