Hunger (Hamsun novel)

**Hunger (Norwegian: *Sult*)** is an 1890 novel by Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, first issued by P.G. Philipsens Forlag. It is often considered the literary beginning of the 20th century and a key work of modern, psychologically focused fiction, exploring the irrationality of the human mind with both fascination and humor.

The story draws loosely on Hamsun’s own poverty after a failed trip to America, before his literary success in 1890. Set in late 19th-century Kristiania (now Oslo), it follows an unnamed, starving young man whose grip on reality weakens as he drifts through the city’s darker corners. He struggles to keep up appearances while his body and mind deteriorate. Unable or unwilling to take up a career he sees as beneath him, he endures a series of encounters that Hamsun called “a series of analyses.” The protagonist shares traits with Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov, reflecting Dostoevsky’s influence on Hamsun. The novel also shows the mark of naturalist writers like Émile Zola, while rejecting the realist tradition.

Two key themes run through *Hunger*: Hamsun’s belief that literature should focus on the complexities of the human mind—captured in his aim to describe “the whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow”—and his criticism of modern urban life. The opening lines describe Kristiania as “this wondrous city that no one leaves before it has made its marks upon him.” This skepticism of city life appears in other Hamsun works, such as *Mysteries* and *Growth of the Soil*, the latter winning him the Nobel Prize but also leading to accusations of proto-National Socialist *Blut und Boden* ideas.

The unnamed narrator, an intellectual vagrant likely in his late twenties, wanders Kristiania in search of food. Over four episodes, he meets various figures, most notably Ylajali, a young woman with whom he shares some physical intimacy. He follows a self-imposed code of honor: giving away money and clothes to children and beggars, refusing food offered to him, and turning himself in for theft. This self-destructive behavior, along with hunger and cold, slowly ruins him. He scrounges for meals, once nearly eating his pencil and his own finger. His social, mental, and physical condition steadily worsens. He does not blame society but rather “God” or a divine order, vowing not to give in and remaining “a foreigner in life,” haunted by “nervousness, by irrational details.” He briefly succeeds in selling a text to a newspaper, but writing becomes harder. At one point, he asks to spend a night in a prison cell, pretending to be a journalist who lost his keys, and cannot bring himself to accept the free breakfast for the homeless. As the novel ends, with his existence at its lowest, he signs onto a ship’s crew and leaves the city.

An excerpt of *Hunger* first appeared anonymously in the Danish magazine *Ny Jord* in November 1888. After the full novel was published in 1890, Hamsun revised it for editions in 1899, 1907, and 1916.

The first English translation, by writer and feminist George Egerton, came out in 1899. Sverre Lyngstad incorrectly claimed her version was bowdlerized regarding the narrator’s sexual thoughts; in fact, later Knopf printings (from May 1921) were censored, reducing the page count from 266 to 263. Stefano Evangelista found Egerton’s translation “has withstood the passage of time very well,” and Tore Rem called it “arguably more radical than Lyngstad’s translation.” Robert Bly’s 1967 translation was called a “betrayal” by Lyngstad, who noted Bly dropped Hamsun’s mix of present and past tense—which mirrored the narrator’s feverish mind—and confused Oslo’s streets and places. Lyngstad’s own 1996 translation is widely seen as definitive. A new translation by Tore Rem and Terence Cave appeared in 2023 from Oxford World’s Classics.

Film adaptations include a 1966 Danish-Norwegian-Swedish film, a 2001 American film, and the 2012 Greek film *Boy Eating the Bird’s Food*, loosely based on the novel. A graphic novel adaptation by Martin Ernstsen was published in 2019.