The central character’s lacks identity he exists in the present without a name, a past, or any clear roots. Lost and deluded, he shuns every chance at intimate human contact, and attempts to live a self-sufficient life, alone but blinded to his own sorry state. As the narrator wanders about, chewing on wood shavings and vomiting what little food he is able to get hold of, desperately seeking nourishment, both essential and creative/spiritual, he spirals into a terrifying cycle of starvation and redemption which leads him to suffer wild delusions and become disturbed by insignificant events, often misunderstanding the behaviour of others. Maintaining his high ideals, he refuses help while he struggles to provide for himself but, with his writing barely earning him a wage, he is forced to pawn his scant belongings to survive, all the while continuing in his own self-delusion of artistic integrity and respectability. Hunger: Roman.Hunger (1890), Sult in the original Norwegian, is the story of an unnamed journalist who haunts the streets of Christiana (now Oslo), treading the fine line between existence and death. Sales Rank Publication Date Lowest New Price His ordeal, enhanced by his inability or unwillingness to pursue a professional career, which he deems unfit for someone of his abilities, is pictured in a series of encounters which Hamsun himself described as 'a series of analyses.' While he vainly tries to maintain an outer shell of respectability, his mental and physical decay are recounted in detail. Set in late 19th century Kristiania, the novel recounts the adventures of a starving young man whose sense of reality is giving way to a delusionary existence on the darker side of a modern metropolis. Written after Hamsun's return from an ill-fated tour of America, Hunger is loosely based on the author's own impoverished life before his breakthrough in 1890. It has been translated into English three times: in 1899 by Mary Chavelita Dunne (under the alias George Egerton), by Robert Bly in 1967, and by Sverre Lyngstad, whose translation is considered definitive. It hails the irrationality of the human mind in an intriguing and sometimes humorous novel.

The novel is hailed as the literary opening of the 20th century and an outstanding example of modern, psychology-driven literature. Parts of it had been published anonymously in the Danish magazine Ny Jord in 1888. Hunger is a novel by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun and was published in its final form in 1890.

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