Hunger

As Isaac Bashevis Singer points out in his introduction, Knut Hamsun's novel is startling in its originality and sincerity. Hamsun makes his character smarter than the reader, places him in intolerable poverty, and has him use his wits to finds means of escape, always temporary. The young man has no past, no family, and an uncertain future, but he is dignified and uncompromising. And he is a writer. Hamsun's descriptions of hunger and the lengths to which his hero goes to assuage it (chewing on wood chips or a bloody butcher's bone) are striking. I have read that the hero in all of Hamsun's best work is this same type, a young, iconoclastic, tormented, and intelligent man. That is recommendation enough.