The Growth of the Soil

The Growth of the Soil is an epic celebration of the Norwegian peasant’s intimate bond with the land. The novel presents the clearing and cultivation of wilderness as a primal act of human meaning-making, a return to elemental truths in an age of industrial upheaval. Knut Hamsun’s lyrical prose and his reverence for agrarian life place this work among the great pastoral novels of world literature. The novel was central to his Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920.

Printed in the aftermath of the First World War, The Growth of the Soil resonated with a Europe exhausted by industrial slaughter and yearning for renewal through simpler, more rooted ways of living. Hamsun's later reputation was deeply shadowed by his support for the Nazi occupation of Norway, a moral catastrophe that has complicated the reception of his literary achievement ever since.