Hunger: Book One
1890
A young man walks the streets of Kristiania, starving, jobless, and too proud to beg. He is a writer, or perhaps he was once a writer, or perhaps he only imagines he will be one. The hunger gnaws at him, but worse than the hollow pain in his stomach is the voice in his head, the relentless self-justification, the strange dignity that keeps him from accepting help even as he withers. Knut Hamsun entered the literary world like a bomb with this 1890 novel, and its power has never dimmed. Written when the author himself was living on the streets of Oslo, Hunger is less a story than a descent into consciousness, a fever dream of pride and self-destruction that anticipates everything modern fiction would become. The prose follows no plot you could summarize. It circles, rages, pleads, and withdraws. It makes you feel the hunger in your own throat. For anyone who has ever been broke, ambitious, and too afraid to admit failure, this book will feel like an X-ray of their own private shame.
Editions
X-Ray
“...I will exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.””
— Knut Hamsun
“I suffered no pain, my hunger had taken the edge off; instead I felt pleasantly empty, untouched by everything around me and happy to be unseen by all. I put my legs up on the bench and leaned back, the best way to feel the true well-being of seclusion. There wasn't a cloud in my mind, nor did I feel any discomfort, and I hadn't a single unfulfilled desire or craving as far as my thought could reach. I lay with open eyes in a state of utter absence from myself and felt deliciously out of it.””
— Knut Hamsun
“Truth is neither ojectivity nor the balanced view; truth is a selfless subjectivity.””
— Knut Hamsun
“The intelligent poor individual was a much finer observer than the intelligent rich one. The poor individual looks around him at every step, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets; thus, every step he takes presents a problem, a task, for his thoughts and feelings. He is alert and sensitive, he is experienced, his soul has been burned...””
— Knut Hamsun
“Keep it, keep it!" I answered. "You are very welcome to it! It is only a couple of small things, doesn't amount to anything”
— Knut Hamsun
“I was on the verge of crying with grief at still being alive.””
— Knut Hamsun
“It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing.””
— Knut Hamsun
“And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me...everything was silent-everything. But upon the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent.””
— Knut Hamsun
“I see stars before my eyes, and my thoughts are swept up into a hurricane of light.””
— Knut Hamsun
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Hamsun, Knut. Hunger: Book One. Lex, lex-books.com/book/hunger-book-one-6cd6a34a-d6b3-439a-92a0-d31f6c251e4b.Hamsun, K. (1890). Hunger: Book One. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/hunger-book-one-6cd6a34a-d6b3-439a-92a0-d31f6c251e4bHamsun, Knut. Hunger: Book One. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/hunger-book-one-6cd6a34a-d6b3-439a-92a0-d31f6c251e4b.
