7 h 35 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 7 h 35 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the pride that keeps you writing also keeps you hungry?
In Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, a nameless young writer walks the streets of Kristiania, trying to turn words into enough money to eat. Editors buy or refuse his articles. He drifts through cheap rooms and sometimes sleeps in a park, holding tight to his belief in his talent.
He could ask for help, but pride makes each admission of need feel costly. As hunger wears down his mind, hope gives way to small lies, sudden joy, kindness and cruelty. A young woman he calls Ylajali offers a glimpse of warmth. Through his own restless account, the novel asks what art costs a person.
What you’ll discover
- A mind under strain Follow thoughts that grow strange and quick as hunger changes the narrator’s senses.
- Pride against need Watch a writer resist the simple admissions that could ease his daily struggle.
- The streets of Kristiania Walk through streets, cheap rooms and a park where shelter is never certain.
- The warmth of Ylajali Meet the woman whose presence gives the narrator a fragile sense of hope.
- The cost of art Consider what it means to risk your body for words you believe must last.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy a close first-person voice, stories of artists and strugglers, city streets in all weathers, and comedy beside real hardship.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Hunger threatens more than the body
- Generosity and lies protect his pride
- Writing brings relief but not safety
- An invented self fills the darkness
- Love appears alongside a moral failure
- Shame makes closeness feel unsafe
- Pride survives as his security disappears
- Hunger unsettles the source of art
- Kindness struggles to reach him
Who’s who
- The narratorA young writer without a name, starving in Christiania, who sells articles when he can and refuses to let anyone see how poor he is.
- YlajaliA name he invents for a woman he follows in the street, and later the name he gives the girl who kisses him.
- The CommandorThe newspaper editor he admires, who rejects his work kindly and gives him money when he is starving.
- Hans Pauli PettersenA theology student and friend who lends the narrator a green blanket and is away when help is needed.
- The landlady at VaterlandA busy, pregnant keeper of a lodging house who gives the narrator bread and a room until his credit runs out.
- MissyA well-dressed acquaintance who keeps asking the narrator how his work is going and whom the narrator dislikes.
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Hunger in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Hunger
by Knut Hamsun · 1890
A starving young writer in Christiania pawns his waistcoat for a stranger and invents a princess named Ylajali.
Easy read2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“Knut Hamsun, like more than one other Norwegian genius, won his first recognition in Denmark, where he spent a few months after his return from the United States.”
In short
What would you do if you had not eaten for three days and still had to look respectable? In Hunger, a young writer walks the streets of Christiania, the city we now call Oslo.
Hunger at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 10 min3 h 15 min fast, 4 h 55 min slow
- Length
- 58,900 words
- Library level
- Easy short sentences, plain words
- First published
- 1890by Knut Hamsun
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A hungry morning ends in strange lies
The book opens in an attic room in Christiania, where the narrator wakes to a clock striking six. His belongings have gone, one by one, to the pawnbroker he calls his Uncle. His rent is overdue, so he creeps down the stairs to avoid his landlady.
Outside, the noise of the street lifts his mood for no clear reason. He pawns his waistcoat, gives a lame beggar a shilling, and then scolds the man for staring at his knees. His plan for a grand article collapses because the pencil is still in the waistcoat at the pawnshop.
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Details
- First published
- 1890
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 4 h 55 min
- Level
- Easy read
Cite this edition
Hamsun, Knut. Hunger. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/hunger.
Hamsun, K. (2026). Hunger. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/hunger (Original work published 1890)
Hamsun, Knut. Hunger. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/hunger.
@book{hamsun2026hunger,
author = {Hamsun, Knut},
title = {Hunger},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/hunger},
note = {First published 1890}
}
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What is Hunger by Knut Hamsun about?
It follows an unnamed young writer in Christiania who is trying to earn money by selling articles. He goes without food for days, pawns his clothes, tells lies to hide his poverty, and meets a girl he names Ylajali.
Who is Ylajali in Hunger?
Ylajali is a name the narrator invents on the spur of the moment for a young woman he follows through the street. Later the name returns in his daydreams and becomes the name he uses for the girl who kisses him.
Is Hunger based on a true story?
Hamsun published the novel in 1890, and it draws on real hardship he knew in his own early years. The narrator is a made-up character, and the book is a novel rather than a memoir.
The author
Knut Hamsun
1859–1952 · Norwegian novelist
Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) was a Norwegian novelist. He lived in Norway and spent periods in the United States during the 1880s. He published Hunger in 1890, Pan in 1894, and Growth of the Soil in 1917. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920.
“Lord God, I feel so wretched!”
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