num_pages: 444
description: Growth of the Soil is perhaps Knut Hamsun’s best known novel and a classic of European literature. It is the story of Isak, ‘a worker of the land without respite’ which sinks its roots into man’s deepest myths about his struggle to cultivate the land and make it fertile. Rich in narrative incident, Hamsun’s novel moves at its own steady pace — the pace of the growth of the crops, on which the characters’ lives depend, and that of the passing seasons. His themes of the self and its perversion by society, and the fundamental human need to reconcile man with the natural world, speaks to us even more clearly now than when the book was first published.
language: English
title: Growth of the Soil
titlecomplete: Growth of the Soil
characters: Isak, Brede Olsen, Geissler, Inger
genres: Fiction, Philosophy, Literature, Classics, Nobel Prize, Novels, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Scandinavian Literature
ratings_count: 10033
places: Norway
publisher: Souvenir Press Ltd