Mysteries
By Knut Hamsun
1892
First Published
4.03
Average Rating
334
Number of Pages
Mysteries (1892) is the story of Johan Nilsen Nagel, a mysterious stranger who suddenly turns up in a small Norwegian town one summer-and just as suddenly disappears. Nagel is a complete outsider, a sort of modern Christ treated in a spirit of near parody. He condemns the politics and thought of the age, brings comfort to the insulted and injured and gains the love of two women suggestive of the biblical Mary and Martha. But there is a sinister side of him: in his vest he carries a vial of Prussic acid. The novel creates a powerful sense of Nagel's stream of thought, as he increasingly withdraws into the torture chamber of his own subconscious psyche.
Avg Rating
4.03
Number of Ratings
7,842
5 STARS
38%
4 STARS
36%
3 STARS
19%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
1%
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Author
Knut Hamsun
Author · 34 books
Novels of Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, pen name of Knut Pedersen, include Hunger (1890) and The Growth of the Soil (1917). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1920. He insisted on the intricacies of the human mind as the main object of modern literature to describe the "whisper of the blood, and the pleading of the bone marrow." Hamsun pursued his literary program, debuting in 1890 with the psychological novel Hunger.
