Growth of the Soil, in Two Volumes

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921. 4th Printing. Hard Cover. Good/No Jacket. 7x5x1. 4th printing of original American edition. Lacks jackets. Frontispiece loose, otherwise very good: boards lightly rubbed, endpapers lightly foxed. 1921 Hard Cover. 304; 276 pp. Navy blue cloth, orange and green titles and decorations, frontispiece portrait of Hamsun. Translated from the Norwegian by W.W. Worster. Hamsun won the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature for this work, which likely led to his other novels being translated and published (though originally written in the 1890s, most of his works did not appear in the United States until the 1920s). "It follows the story (truncated) of a man who settles and lives in rural Norway. First published in 1917, it has since been translated from Norwegian into languages such as English. The novel was written in the popular style of Norwegian new realism, a movement dominating the early 20th century. The novel exemplified Hamsun's aversion to modernity and inclination towards primitivism and the agrarian lifestyle. The novel employed literary techniques new to the time such as stream of consciousness. Hamsun tended to stress the relationship between his characters and the natural environment. Growth of the Soil portrays the protagonist (Isak) and his family as awed by modernity, yet at times, they come into conflict with it. The novel contains two sections entitled Book One and Book Two. The first book focuses almost solely on the story of Isak and his family and the second book starts off by following the plight of Axel and ends mainly focusing on Isak's family. (Inventory #: 2343310)