Growth of the Soil

About this book

Isak, a strong, slow, silent man, walks into the wild Norwegian uplands with a sack on his back and begins to clear a farm with his bare hands. Inger, a woman with a hare lip whom no one else would marry, comes to live with him, and year by year they build a home, raise children and turn the wilderness into fields. Their life is shaken by tragedy and crime, and by the arrival of the modern world: traders, speculators, a copper mine and the restless hopes of their sons, while Isak goes on ploughing.

Context and significance

Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) published the novel in 1917 and won the Nobel Prize in 1920, largely because of it; his later support for the Nazi occupation of Norway left a shadow over his name. This translation is by W. W. Worster. The novel that made Hamsun famous, very different in mood, is Hunger.

About the author