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Growth of the Soil (Penguin Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Knut Hamsun
Creators: Brad Leithauser, Sverre Lyngstad
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
Buy Used: $4.19
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New (38) Used (16) from $4.19
Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 548521
Media: Paperback
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0143105108
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.8236
EAN: 9780143105107
ASIN: 0143105108
Publication Date: September 25, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Standard used condition.
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Product Description
The epic novel of man and nature that won its author the Nobel Prize in Literature the first new English translation since the novel s original publication ninety years ago
When it was first published in 1917, Growth of the Soil was immediately recognized as a masterpiece. Ninety years later it remains a transporting literary experience. In the story of Isak, who leaves his village to clear a homestead and raise a family amid the untilled tracts of the Norwegian back country, Knut Hamsun evokes the elemental bond between humans and the land. Newly translated by the acclaimed Hamsun scholar Sverre Lyngstad, Hamsun s novel is a work of preternatural calm, stern beauty, and biblical power and the crowning achievement of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 34 more reviews...
 a 20th-century masterpiece April 24, 2000
Bruce Kendall (Southern Pines, NC)
59 out of 67 found this review helpful
This book is in my top-twenty list of 20th-century novels. I can't fathom how anyone with any literary sense could call the prose "stilted." Simple, yes, prosaic, perhaps; but spare and lean does not mean devoid of grace. Hemingway strove all his life to write this way. And let's not forget, Henry Miller held Hamsun and Celine (another politically incorrect master-novelist) in the highest possible regard and wrote that they both influenced him greatly. I cannot recommend this novel highly enough to anyone who loves literature. As far as the political context is concerned, let's remember that Zubin Mehta performed Wagner in Israel after a long ban and received an enthusiastic reception. I'm a little weary of those politically sensitive souls that want to remove Twain from school reading lists and find Shakespeare too chauvenistic, etc. etc. I certainly can find no evidence of Hamsun's political views expressed in any of his novels. Give this one a chance and decide for yourself. Don't be put off by the thought-police.
Fantastic portrait with great human insight June 21, 1999
Frank-Tommy Olsen (New Zealand)
46 out of 49 found this review helpful
People have different opinions of which was the greatest of Knut Hamsun's novels, and very often one of the works from the 1890s will range highest. People also have a lot to say about Hamsun's terms with Nazi-Germany and which made the common Norwegian to see him as a betrayer. He was their greatest hero, up there with King Haakon and Fridtjof Nansen. All these circumstances are more complex to be drawn up here, so let's stay with the fact that Hamsun was one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time. "Growth of the Soil" is the book that secured him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1920, the book the common man of the day valued more than any other of his works, the book that the Germans had printed in "field-editions" to send with their soldiers to the fronts. But this is not an ideally portrait of the values in life - it is a very accurate description of how the life was in the outback for these early settlers, how extremely simple they were. It was not because they had achieved a great understanding of the meaning of life, readers in that belief are totally wrong. They had no choice, were not on terms with their inner-self at all, did not know comfort and beautiful music, could not afford to be fastidious. I can't think of any other book in world literature that comes anywhere near "Growth of the Soil" in portraying these simple, unsophisticated people breaking the land and struggle to live. I am sure this could be the life story of several of my ancestors in North-Norway, the diaries of their lives, but they (like Isak) could not read or write or tell their story. Instead Knut Hamsun has done it with such wisdom, humour and tenderness and most of all his great talent, that in many respects this is his best work
Great Tale of the Human Experience December 22, 1999
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
I picked up this novel many years ago, unfamiliar with its history or the Nazi associations of the author, and began reading it during one of the bleakest periods of my life. I found great comfort in the humanity of the characters, their imperfections, their struggles with nature, with each other and with themselves. Knut Hamsun did not turn away from the dark side of human nature. He accepted it. This is not a literary review, just a heartfelt one for a book that was able to reach out across time and provide enlightenment and comfort.
Great artists are not always great people July 23, 2003
J. Russell (Vancouver)
17 out of 20 found this review helpful
Knut Hamson is a fascinating character and his personality comes through in his fiction. From Hunger on through to this novel he explores the psychology of man more intelligently and with more humour than anyone has ever done (with the possible exception of Dostoyevsky). Yes, Hamson was a racist, and a Nazi sympathizer. This has held many people back from reading his novels, assuming that someone who believes these things must not be worth reading. This is a huge mistake. The Gods of great art (assuming such a thing exists) don't care if your morals are in check, they don't care if you are a "good" person in accordance with our modern morality. The gifts of artistic skills fall upon people randomly and without regard for who they are. People may critisize Hamsons politics but his talent as a writer is untarnished, and his contribution to literature indisputable. Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein's "American" style of writing, whcih was very editorial, is seen first in Hamson's Hunger, written in 1888 and he has lost none of his power by the time he got around to writing "Growth of the Soil". So sensitive people who can only read novels by people they agree with might want to avoid his writing, but anyone who is interested in how twentieth century writing came to be should read Hamson, and I recomend this novel after reading his first three (Hunger, Mysteries, and Pan).
Robust & Brilliant! February 13, 2002
KH (United States)
10 out of 15 found this review helpful
A monumental work dealing with man's roll in the natural world, and the collision of this world with capitalism, egalitarianism and modernity.
While Growth of the Soil is not overtly political, Hamsun took a clear and direct philosophical stance against what he saw as the coming bastardization of Europe's esoteric traditions (Hamsun recognized anthropocentrism was no less appealing when masked as "progress"). For Hamsun, Germanic man was intrinsically linked to the very soil that provided him with life and sustenance. This relationship, between man and earth Hamsun claimed, was almost religious and holy in nature. Only through the preservation of this communion with the earth could Northern Europe hope to maintain its uniqueness as a cultural and racial entity.
Hamsun's worldview mirrored many of the then embryonic nationalist movements in Germany, most of which openly rallied against leftist socio-political systems that were seen as an affront to the notion of "Blood and Soil". Hamsun in many ways influenced the blending of ecology and nationalist politics in Northern Europe (was he the first "Green"?).
Years later National Socialism gave Hamsun a political outlet for his worldview, while Hamsun gave the National Socialists a literary and philosophical giant to champion.
While controversy has surrounded Hamsun's support for the German and Norwegian National Socialist movements of the 1930/40's, Hamsun (contrary to popular opinion) never apologized for his activities, and remained a somewhat staunch if cautious opponent of Europe's post-war "new order" ... even after the forced "reeducation" of his wife and both sons in Allied concentration camps.
Growth of the Soil is beautifully and powerfully written. It is bold, uncompromising and radical.
Well written & controversial, but worth reading.
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