The writer and journalist on Jon Savage’s punk bible, coming back to DH Lawrence and finding comfort in Wodehouse’s Eggs, Beans and Crumpets
December 2021
Cultural prescription
Feeling lonely? Film, music, art and more that will put you in good company
From the stark horror of Hamsun’s novel to Fassbinder’s commentary on love and racism, our critics choose great cultural works about being alone
November 2019
Hunger review – hope and heartbreak on the breadline
Adapted from Knut Hamsun’s first-person novel, Fay Lomas’s production is an empathetic and frightening look at a writer whose senses begin to turn on him as he falls into poverty
July 2019
Further reading
Generation Rent: a writer living in a shed on the best books on the housing crisis
From Knut Hamsun’s Hunger to Richard McGuire’s profound graphic novel Here, Homesick author Catrina Davies picks her favourites
January 2017
Books of defiance
With Mysteries, Knut Hamsun rewrote the novel's rules
This strange tale of a quixotic young man disturbing the equilibrium of a Norwegian town also disturbed accepted ways of depicting inner life
June 2015
Top 10s
Top 10 books about being alone
Novelist Rebecca Dinerstein chooses her top 10 books on solitude, remoteness and physical or psychic isolation
May 2014
Top 10s
Dea Brøvig's top 10 Norwegian novels
From Knut Hamsun's classic story of starvation to Karl Ove Knausgård's autobiographical opus, here is the novelist's pick of Norwegian books in translation
July 2012
Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner – review
Ben Lerner's remarkable first novel evokes a rich genealogy of alienated heroes, writes Geoff Dyer
January 2012
Strange case of a fake Ibsen play that has gripped Scandinavia
Literary experts embarrassed after 'lost fragments' of work by Norway's famous playwright are alleged to have been forged
December 2010
Ibsen's The Master Builder
An older man is insensitive to his wife and takes up with a younger woman. He is desperate to keep death at bay. No Ibsen play is more autobiographical than The Master Builder, argues Toril Moi
February 2010
Books blog
Does literature of the homeless exist?
Ben Myers: Writing in a warm room is hard enough, let alone when you've no food or money. No wonder there is so little authentic homeless literature
September 2009
Books blog
Should Hamsun's jubilee be celebrated?
Gwladys Fouché: The ugly politics of Hunger's author continue to overshadow his achievements in literature
August 2009
Norwegian wood
On the 150th anniversary of Knut Hamsun's birth, Jonathan Glancey visits a new centre that is as complex and challenging as the controversial author
February 2009
Knut Hamsun commemorated on Norwegian coin
The acclaimed Norwegian writer, who controversially supported his country's invasion by the Germans in 1940, has been honoured on a national coin
March 2002
Hitler's little helper
All of Norway loved the novelist Knut Hamsun. Then the Nazis invaded and he welcomed them with open arms. Geoffrey Macnab reports.
