Hunger by Knut Hamsun

"God in heaven, to what extremity I had come!" cried the lonely desperate man living in a harsh cruel material world. This man is the main character in Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun’s (1859 - 1952) masterpiece: "Hunger". What else to expect from the lips of a poor columnist who suffers homelessness, poverty, and hunger in the cool streets of Christiania (the old name of Oslo)?

From bad to worse, the nameless hero of this novel spends his days wandering the streets, trying to make his living with little success. He blames his bad luck for his suffering. He tries journalistic writing which ensures him a little income from time to time in order to pay his debts and buy some food. The funny thing is how much he always spends on charity, thast reminds him of his "nobleness", "honor" and "humanity".

When all the doors are closed, with no money in his pockets, and no roof to protect him from winter’s harsh cold, he gets to know exactly how real hunger feels like. Shirtless, living on the streets and too proud to let himself degrade to the level of begging or stealing, he will have long uninterrupted days without a crumb. He reaches an advanced stage of rave and idiocy, but the Divine Providence helps him after all, sending him away on a departing ship to leave behind him the scary city and the ghost of hunger that is on the hunt for a new victim on the streets.

The novel was published in 1890, and had a wide fame all around the globe. It is considered today as one of the best classics ever written. It is behind Hamsun’s literary success and has even earned him the Nobel Prize of literature in 1920.

In “Hunger”, Hamsun started a new literary revolution, a totally innovative type of writing that is based on internal dialogue, one that dives so deep in the human mind and its floating ideas. We could call it "the psychological literature", which later, strongly influenced other writers like Virginia Woolf and Henry James.

Hamsun is believed to be the godfather of the modern literature. He considers that the main purpose of literature must be "Describing the whispers of the blood, and seeking the bone marrow" while focusing on the various intricacies of the human reason. On this, says the great American author Ernest Hemingway: "​​Hamsun taught me how to write." All those characteristics appeared for the first time in "Hunger".

Ernest Hemingway

The protagonist’s thoughts and reflections create a deep connection between man and the nature around him and in fact, Hamsun ensured that his character reaches delirium in that wild, crazy and merciless winter.

In spite of all the tragic events in the days of hunger, the novel is totally far from the blue sad writing style. Comedy is strangely present in the weird ideas that cross the journalist’s mind. That was actually one of the best things about the book. I enjoyed black comedy situations spread all over the pages.

The peculiar thing about "Hunger" is the loneliness in the hero's life: he has no family or close friends. In a way, he represents the poor human that lives inside every single one of us. By representing the nameless character as such, the hunger is no longer physical but it also becomes a hunger of the soul. Hunger therefore will also reveal an ugly truth about the human nature of people nowadays.

The philosophy of Hamsun is a reaction to the materialistic thinking that invaded the world at the beginning of the last century. This shows how he was affected by senior philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer or Friedrich Nietzsche, and former authors like Russian Fyodor Dostoyevsky‎.

At the end, I just wanted to say that "Hunger" is really a great book. It is original and unique. I guess without doubt it deserves to be on the New York Times' list of 1001 Books that must be read before death. I am just glad to share this book and my experience with it. Hope you like it as much as I did.