Résumé
Résumé de La Faim
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
For readers who love close, strange portraits of a single mind, and anyone curious about the roots of modern fiction. Pride, poverty and the struggle to write meet in a young writer’s shifting thoughts and moods.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Hunger is a novel by the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, published in 1890. Hamsun knew poverty well. He had worked at many poor jobs and had gone hungry himself before he found a voice of his own. The book grew out of that time. It follows a young man who wants to live as a writer in Kristiania, the city we now call Oslo, and who is slowly starving while he tries.
There is no grand plot here. The story is told by the young man himself, hour by hour, in the city streets, in cheap rooms and in a park where he sometimes sleeps. You get his hopes, his pride, his small lies and his sudden bursts of joy, all seen from inside a mind that hunger is wearing thin. The book changed how novels could show a person's thoughts. Let us begin with the young man's daily struggle to sell a few words for a few coins.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A young writer starves in KristianiaFree
- 2Pride stops him from asking for help
- 3Hunger bends his mind and his senses
- 4Strange kindness and sudden cruelty
- 5Ylajali and the pull of hope
- 6What the book is about and how it speaks
Point clé 1 sur 6
A young writer starves in Kristiania
The story opens in Kristiania, which the narrator calls a strange city that leaves its mark on everyone who lives there. He is a young man with no name given to the reader. He lives by writing short pieces for the newspapers, and he has not sold one for a long time. When the story begins he wakes early in a rented room, already hungry, and he is already behind with his rent.
He is not a fool or a drunk. He is educated, sensitive and full of ideas. He believes that one good article could change his luck, and sometimes he writes one. But the money from a sale is soon gone, and the long days of nothing come back. The reader learns quickly that this is a cycle, not a single crisis.
Hamsun gives us the details of a poor man's day. The narrator walks the streets because he has no place to sit. He looks into shop windows and watches people who have a meal waiting for them. He feels each coin in his pocket as if it were a living thing. He pawns what he owns, piece by piece, including parts of his clothing, to buy something to eat or to pay for a bed.
What makes the opening so strong is its tone. The narrator does not beg the reader for pity. He tells his story with a odd cheerfulness and a sharp eye for what is around him. That mix of suffering and wit is the first thing to notice. It makes him a companion you cannot easily put down, even when you want to look away.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- The narrator
- A nameless young writer in Kristiania struggles to sell articles while hiding his poverty from the people around him.
- Ylajali
- A young woman whom the narrator meets and names himself becomes the focus of his romantic hopes.
- Editors and newspaper men
- The narrator depends on these newspaper workers to accept his writing and provide his precarious income.
- Landladies and shopkeepers
- These city residents supply rooms and necessities while the narrator struggles to conceal his need and maintain appearances.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 68,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 4 h 35 min
- Listening time7 h 35 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages
Questions about La Faim
What is Hunger by Knut Hamsun about?
It follows a young, unnamed writer in Kristiania who tries to live on newspaper articles and slowly starves. The book shows his pride, shifting moods and strange behavior as hunger works on his mind.
Is Hunger a true story?
It is a novel, published in 1890, but Hamsun drew on his own years of poverty and hardship. The narrator is not Hamsun himself, yet the hunger and the struggle to write come from lived experience.
Where and when is Hunger set?
It is set in Kristiania, the old name for Oslo, in the late nineteenth century. The streets, parks, cheap lodgings and shops of the city form the background for every scene.
Is Hunger hard to read?
It is short and easy to follow. Most settle into its rhythm quickly.
Why is Hunger important in literature?
It stays inside one mind and follows its changing thoughts and moods. Many later writers, including Kafka, admired it, and critics see it as an early step toward modern fiction.