INTRODUCTION BY JO NESBO AFTERWORD BY PAUL AUSTER Nineteenth-century Kristiania is an unforgiving place, and work is thin on the ground. Roaming the streets of Norway's capital, a penniless young writer searches for inspiration whilst trying desperately to make ends meet. Driven to extraordinary lengths, sleeping under the stars with his stomach growling, the writer's behaviour becomes increasingly irrational and his world spirals into chaos. Hunger was Knut Hamsun's first novel and earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920. A disturbing and darkly humorous masterpiece of existential fiction, Hunger anticipated and influenced some of the twentieth century's most acclaimed writers including Camus, Kafka and Fante.

'Knut Hamsun founded the modernist and postmodernist novel at once' writes James Wood in his introduction to this seminal work by a Nobel Prize-winning writer who has been recognised as one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century. A young man called John Nagel arrives to spend a summer in a small Norwegian coastal town, a stranger in a loud yellow suit who begins to behave very curiously. He shocks, bewilders and beguiles with his open defiance and erratic self-revelations. Nagel's presence acts as a catalyst for the hidden impulses, concealed thoughts and darker instincts of the townsfolk. Cursed with the ability to understand the human soul, especially his own, Nagel can foresee, but cannot prevent, his own destruction.

This is the story of Isak, a worker of the land, with its roots in man's deepest myths about the struggle to cultivate the land and make it fertile. Sweeping and panoramic, the story moves at the pace of the passing seasons and with the growth of the crops on which the characters' lives depend. Hamsun's themes of individual freedom, and the fundamental human need to reconcile man with the natural world, speak even more resonantly than when the novel was first published.

'When the snow water had broken crevices open in the mountain a shot or even just a sharp cry was enough to tear loose a huge slab and send it toppling.' Lieutenant Thomas Glahn spends a summer in northern Norway, where the midnight sun triggers a short but intense release of energies. Living out of a rudimentary hut on the edge of the forest, he pursues a solitary existence, hunting, fishing, and engaging intermittently with the inhabitants of the nearby coastal village. Among these is Edvarda, daughter of the wealthy local trader Herr Mack. Their mutual attraction rapidly develops into an erotic fascination shot through with suspicions and jealousies; a series of fraught encounters culminates in violent actions with unforeseen consequences. First published in 1894, Pan was an immediate success and remains a classic of Norwegian literature. It embodies many of the distinctive features of Hamsun's early works, in particular a rejection of psychological stereotypes and a style infused by what Hamsun called a 'poetry of the nerves'. Terence Cave's new translation restores the power and virtuosity of Hamsun's original and includes an illuminating introduction and explanatory notes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

One of the most important and controversial writers of the 20th century, Knut Hamsun made literary history with the publication in 1890 of this powerful, autobiographical novel recounting the abject poverty, hunger and despair of a young writer struggling to achieve self-discovery and its ultimate artistic expression. The book brilliantly probes the psychodynamics of alienation and obsession, painting an unforgettable portrait of a man driven by forces beyond his control to the edge of self-destruction. Hamsun influenced many of the major 20th-century writers who followed him, including Kafka, Joyce and Henry Miller. This book is required reading in world literature courses. Unabridged republication of the 1921 George Egerton translation.

First published in Norway in 1890, Hunger probes into the depths of consciousness with frightening and gripping power. Like the works of Dostoyevsky, it marks an extraordinary break with Western literary and humanistic traditions.

A true classic of modern literature that has been described as "one of the most disturbing novels in existence" ("Time Out"), Hunger is the story of a Norwegian artist who wanders the streets, struggling on the edge of starvation. As hunger overtakes him, he slides inexorably into paranoia and despair. The descent into madness is recounted by the unnamed narrator in increasingly urgent and disjointed prose, as he loses his grip on reality.