Ny Jord, published in English as Shallow Soil, is a satirical novel set among the artists, journalists and hangers-on of Kristiania in the early 1890s. Its central figure is Ole Henriksen, an idealistic young writer who is surrounded by cynical, ambitious and sometimes dishonest acquaintances. Hamsun uses the group to poke fun at the vanity and opportunism of the cultural world. The book is sharper and more openly critical than his intimate early novels, and shows his lifelong dislike of fashionable intellectual life.