Mysteries: A Novel [Paperback]

Knut Hamsun (Author), Gerry Bothmer (Translator), Sven Birkerts (Introduction), Isaac Bashevis Singer (Afterword)

Book Description

Release date: August 8, 2006

In a Norwegian coastal town, society's carefully woven threads begin to unravel when an unsettling stranger named Johan Nagel arrives. With an often brutal insight into human nature, Nagel draws out the townsfolk, exposing their darkest instincts and suppressed desires. At once arrogant and unassuming, righteous and depraved, Nagel seduces the entire community even as he turns it on its head--before disappearing as suddenly as he arrived.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The main character, like the title says, is a mysterious guy. Nagel arrives in a Norwegian town with plenty of money and goodwill, and though kind of an eccentric, seems to start to fit in with the local crowd. But it's almost as if Nagel only just landed on Earth, and while he wishes to live correctly, has no idea how to do it. Published at the end of the last century, Mysteries is an existentialist novel, very strange, often very funny, often sad and largely asking the question, "Why live?" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Mysteries is as immediate and haunting as last night's dreams (or nightmares)." --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

"Hamsun, perhaps more than any other writer, prefigured the techniques and attitudes of modernism." --Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Tra edition (August 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374530297
• ISBN-13: 978-0374530297
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #132,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Mysteries November 2, 2000

By Daniel L. Chodos

Format:Paperback

"Mysteries" remains amongst the handful of pure existential novels before there was such a thing; before the very word became a contrived label. Nagel arrives in town as an eccentric outsider. He does not reveal a complete and thorough past -- partly because he guiltily enjoys the shroud of mystery people pin on him -- partly because he can not come to grips with it himself. Here is a man able to intelligently articulate (whilst drunk, mind you) on the scope of man's most pressing questions of existence, but struggles repeatedly with his own conscious and interactions with people. The genius of the novel is found in that the way one reacts to Nagel invariably reveals something about you, the reader! Do you hold the wealthy intellect in contempt for not breaking free from the situations he creates? Or do you sympathize with this man and relate to his own pattern of self destruction? The answer does not come easy. There are arguments for both disgust and pity. And out of our own curious need to finalize our opinions, to decide what we really think, we read on and on unable to prevent ourselves from being shaped by this novel . "Mysteries" contains one of the most complex character studies in literature while being completely void of pretentious airs. Nagel has a great mind, but that's exactly the problem, he can't reason out the cynicism he holds for himself. One of Hamsun's underlying themes is an illustration of how the great thinkers of the world end up so tightly wrapped with pessimism that they are unable to function in society. He dispels any sense of romanticism that we commonly hold for the struggling artists, philosophers, and eccentrics of the world.

Oh, and carefully read the lines pertaining to "The Midget." The only place you might find a greater supporting cast member is in Shakespeare's canon.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Shatteringly Gorgeous Story February 20, 2005

By Karen Mercury

Format:Paperback

This book was the #1 hugest influence on me as a teen. I can't say enough good things about it. It's prose poetry in motion. Hamsun wrote about what nowadays we'd call a manic-depressive or bipolar man who is living on the edge of a deep, mystical Norweigan nightmare where the nights never end. A choir of a thousand voices, violin cases, apothecary smells, lifesaving medals...Johan Nilsen Nagel is the most fully-realized character of all time. This is probably literature's first paranormal, too. The Midget is unforgettable as well.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Cold Wind... October 3, 2000

By [e-mail]

Format:Paperback

He is one of the great writers of the twentieth century, though his best works were written before 1900. He is one of the most influential European novelists of the last hundred years, yet he is not well known in the United States. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the most important Norwegian author since Ibsen, he is often ignored in his own country. He is Knut Hamsun -- novelist of genius...

Hamsun, in "Mysteries, Pan, and Hunger", wrote three of the greatest novels of the late nineteenth century, novels which created a new literary style and which delineated a new literary hero: the alienated loner. His work was widely admired in the first half of the twentieth century, with writers as diverse as Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Henry Miller citing Hamsun's work as being of special importance and influence. Isaac Bashevis Singer, in his essay "Knut Hamsun, Artist of Skepticism" goes so far as to claim that "the whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun." Henry Miller said of "Mysteries" that it "is closer to me than any other book I've read." The second of Hamsun's great early novels, and my personal second favorite...!