Romaner knut hamsun biography

Knut Hamsun (August 4, 1859 – February 19, 1952) was a leading Norwegian author and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1920.

His most famous novel, Hunger, describes the experiences of a poor but proud intellectual who is modeled on Rodion Raskolnikov, the hero of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

Romaner knut hamsun biography

Following Dostoevsky, Hamsun was a key transitional figure between nineteenth century realism and the subjectivism of modern prose, such as the irrational world of Franz Kafka. He was noted for his insistence that the intricacies of the human mind ought to be the main object of modern literature.

Many modernists embraced the modern, urban culture, but Hamsun shows it to be a terrifying place, devoid of the certainties and securities of pre-modern life. He showed the darker, irrational side of "human progress" at a time when its virtues were largely trumpeted by other modern artists.

Biography

Knut Hamsun was born