Customer Reviews

Night Roamers and Other Stories

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"Night Roamers and Other Stories" is a collection of "discovered" stories from the Nobel Laureate Knut Hamsun. There's probably a reason that most of these stories had to be "discovered" but they all have the stamp of the unique author. The title story starts us out and it is a fairly decent snapshot of a night on the town as seen by an observer; not a participant. "My Traveling Companion" is another standard Hamsun story about a deranged traveling companion. Hamsun's world is full these types of people. "On Tour" is another Hamsun-style account of all the pitfalls that happened the author on tour. Despite a good example of Hamsun paranoia, I thought that the story was too long and too trivial. "Bad Days" can be described the same way. Likewise, the story "Sin" deals in great detail about a young girl who stole flowers from a cemetary. There may have been a message there but it must have passed me by.

Hamsun seems to have travelled a lot in his career. The closing story, "A Fragment of Life", paints a boring, self-indulgent picture of a spoiled young man who seemed to have left home in search of better partying. On the basis of his travel stories, Hamsun was a pretty good observer of his surroundings so I don't see "A Fragment of Life" as autobiographic.

There is a good detailed account of each of the stories by Lars Frode Larsen who gives the history of each story and other related trivia.

I have down-played the quality of "Night Roamers and Other Stories" mainly because I've read a lot of Hamsun and most of it better that this. Hamsun reminds me of a slightly disturbed yet brilliant nerd in college who can be quite amusing so long as you keep him away from your other friends. Hamsun may have focussed on a lot of trivial scenarios in "Night Roamers" but, with his talent, he can make trivial seem quite unique.