Growth of the Soil

Growth of the Soil was quickly acclaimed as a masterpiece after its 1917 debut. It is still a moving literary experience 90 years later. Knut Hamsun depicts the fundamental connection between people and the earth in his tale of Isak, who leaves his village to establish a homestead and raise a family amidst the tilled fields of the Norwegian back country. The novel by Hamsun, recently translated by renowned Hamsun scholar Sverre Lyngstad, is the pinnacle work of one of the finest writers of the 20th century and a masterpiece of supernatural serenity, stern beauty, and biblical majesty.