Pan

Lieutenant Thomas Glahn has retreated from the world into the deep forests of Nordland, Norway. A hunter and former soldier, he lives alone in a small hut with his dog Æsop, finding solace in the raw, indifferent beauty of the wilderness. Then he meets Edvarda, the daughter of a local merchant, and something stirs in him that he cannot name. What unfolds is a delicate, devastating study of longing and miscommunication. Glahn and Edvarda are drawn to each other with an intensity that frightens them both, yet they speak different emotional languages. He offers silence; she demands words. He craves solitude; she wants presence. Their courtship unfolds in glances and absence, in moments of terrifying closeness followed by inexplicable withdrawal. This is psychological modernism at its most seductive, Hamsun's prose has the quality of a half-remembered dream, beautiful and unsettling. The novel asks what happens when two people cannot bridge the distance between themselves, even when they desperately want to.