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Title: Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun ISBN: 0-394-71781-3 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 May, 1972 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.04 (25 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A whole life, (generation) and no visit to the City!
Comment: This book is slow but it covers a whole life! Hamsun got the Nobel price for it and got shut down because he had been associated with the "Nazis" (He had been misused by their propaganda and was very bitter about it late in life, but that's another story, just take it from me: This is no "Nazi propaganda!" However, if you love nature and a steady life, this book can certainly show you how to do this. It's one of the few books I've read more than once and you should read it at least once for your own benefit. - Strange as it may sound, but if you've read Pirsig's "Zen or the art of Motorcycle maintenance" then you get equal satisfaction out of this one, even if you don't agree with the author. This is a man with fire and honesty in the belly!!! Shame, they're not here anymore....
Rating: 5
Summary: Fantastic portrait with great human insight
Comment: People have different opinions of which was the greatest of Knut Hamsun's novels, and very often one of the works from the 1890s will range highest. People also have a lot to say about Hamsun's terms with Nazi-Germany and which made the common Norwegian to see him as a betrayer. He was their greatest hero, up there with King Haakon and Fridtjof Nansen. All these circumstances are more complex to be drawn up here, so let's stay with the fact that Hamsun was one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time. "Growth of the Soil" is the book that secured him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1920, the book the common man of the day valued more than any other of his works, the book that the Germans had printed in "field-editions" to send with their soldiers to the fronts. But this is not an ideally portrait of the values in life - it is a very accurate description of how the life was in the outback for these early settlers, how extremely simple they were. It was not because they had achieved a great understanding of the meaning of life, readers in that belief are totally wrong. They had no choice, were not on terms with their inner-self at all, did not know comfort and beautiful music, could not afford to be fastidious. I can't think of any other book in world literature that comes anywhere near "Growth of the Soil" in portraying these simple, unsophisticated people breaking the land and struggle to live. I am sure this could be the life story of several of my ancestors in North-Norway, the diaries of their lives, but they (like Isak) could not read or write or tell their story. Instead Knut Hamsun has done it with such wisdom, humour and tenderness and most of all his great talent, that in many respects this is his best work
Rating: 3
Summary: Leave in Refrigerator
Comment: It was primarily for this book that Hamsun won the Nobel Prize in 1921. From this distance it's hard to see why. "Growth" is a pretty good novel but not spectacular. Plot: pioneer sets up in wilderness, gets woman, they start farming and eventually become prosperous. The pioneer is too much the "cute" father-figure. The other characters are mildly interesting in a gossipy way, and enough happens to keep the reader interested in the story.
But a "classic" needs more, by way of universality or comprehensiveness or emotional depth. The last is out because the characters are all types and do the expected things. The second is out because the scope of the book is limited to one Norwegian family. As for the first, the book is too comfortable to describe any real conflict that might affect anyone outside its limited range.
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Title: Hunger by Knut Hamsun, Robert Bly, Paul Auster ISBN: 0374525285 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Pan: From the Papers of Lieutenant Thomas Glahn by Knut Hamsun, Sverre Lyngstad ISBN: 0141180676 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Mysteries by Knut Hamsun, Sverre Lyngstad ISBN: 0141186186 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 02 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: In Wonderland by Knut Hamsun, Sverre Lyngstad ISBN: 0970312555 Publisher: Ig Publishing Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine ISBN: 0811208478 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: 01 January, 1983 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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