![]() ![]() Through the narrator’s increasingly wild musings, it is difficult for the reader to decipher whether the protagonist is insane or just hungry, and whether his hunger is forced upon him by poverty or voluntarily undertaken as part of a fascinating, yet ambiguous, creative project. What makes the novel remarkable is how it portrays the inner life of a-literally-starving artist. The novel’s plot is spare: an unnamed-and unreliable-narrator arrives in Kristiania (now Oslo) he struggles to get work as a writer and has occasional run-ins with strangers three months later, he leaves the city by boat. Though Hamsun’s later novels would take more conventional forms, Sult was a harbinger of 20 th century modernism for its stream-of-consciousness narration and its focalization of a vagabond figure who struggles to cope with modern urban life. When Sult was published in 1890, it represented a literary breakthrough not just in Scandinavia but also throughout Europe. ![]() ![]() So opens Knut Hamsun’s novel, Sult ( Hunger ). It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark upon him. Title page for first edition of Sult ( Copenhagen, 1890)ĭet var i den Tid, jeg gik omkring og sulted i Kristiania, denne forunderlige By, som ingen forlader, før han har faaet Mærker af den. ![]()
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