Knut Hamsun: Growth of the Soil

The Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun (1859-1952) was awarded the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature for his novel "Growth of the Soil." The farmer Isak begins to gradually settle in a remote forest corner, establishing his own life and the space around him. The years go by, time fills them with faces and events: Inger arrives and stays as his wife, children are born and grow up, and the farm expands. Mistakes, troubles, bureaucratic traps, and the envy of outsiders do not bypass Isak's home. One thing remains constant: the daily hard, creative labor. Figures who "do not want to keep pace with life" and "want to outrun it" cast a web of temptations, and not all the characters manage to avoid them, yet the main thing remains unchanged, and this is "a life of justice and possibility, a life with a trusting and proper attitude toward everything."
Hamsun does not idealize his characters; he admires their virtues and flaws, their strength and weakness, speaking with rapture about their aspirations and hopes, small victories and great defeats, calling on society in the midst of the First World War to turn to peace and creative labor.

Author: Knut Hamsun

Translation: Nina Fedorova

Pages: 448 (typographical). Softcover

Dimensions: 179x115x20 mm

Series: Azbooka-Classics