On Overgrown Paths

Erscheinungsjahr 2027
ISBN: 978-0-19-892830-0
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 208 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 129 mm x 196 mm

Reihe: Oxford World's Classics

'Midsummer's Day 1948: Today the Supreme Court has made its judgement, and I end my writing'

On Overgrown Paths, the last work of the Nobel Prize winner Knut Hamsun, was published in 1949. It is an epilogue in all senses, an exemplary instance of 'late work' as well as of life-writing. Composed at a critical juncture in European history and in Hamsun's life and career, it documents an irreversible fall from grace.

The book is a powerfully written, deeply engaging work of self-narrative by a great European author who threw in his lot with the Nazi regime. It thus raises questions of literary self-presentation and historical veracity, as well as the perennial question of how one reads works by an ethically compromised writer.

The distinctly hybrid and fragmented text On Overgrown Paths is a kind of diary of the period from May 1945, when Hamsun was placed under house arrest, until June 1948, when the Norwegian Supreme Court pronounced its final judgement. It includes an account of his activities and impressions during the period of his internments, documents of self-defence, and many anecdotal reminiscences, notably from his time in northern Norway in his childhood and youth and in America in the 1880s. On Overgrown Paths is also a subtle and moving depiction of old age.

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Autoren/Hrsg.

Hamsun, Knut

Rem, Tore

Weitere Mitwirkende

Cave, Terence

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- Note on the Text

- Select Bibliography

- A Chronology of Knut Hamsun

- ON OVERGROWN PATHS

- Explanatory Notes

Über Autor(innen)

Terence Cave CBE FBA is Emeritus Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. Known primarily for his contributions to French Renaissance studies, he has also written on Aristotelian poetics and on the relations between literature and music. In 2009, he won the Balzan Prize for literature since 1500. His recent books include Thinking with Literature (2016) and Live Artefacts (2022). His translations include Mme de Lafayette's The Princesse de Clèves and Knut Hamsun's Hunger and Pan for Oxford World's Classics.

Tore Rem is Professor of English literature at the University of Oslo and director of the interdisciplinary initiative UiO:Democracy. He is an academic and a non-fiction writer and has published widely on Scandinavian and British literature. His Knut Hamsun: Reisen til Hitler [The Journey to Hitler] came out in Norwegian in 2014 and has been translated into several languages. He is general editor of the Penguin Classics edition of Henrik Ibsen, and has, together with Narve Fulsås, published the monograph Ibsen, Scandinavia and the Making of a World Drama (2018) and edited Ibsen in Context (2021). He has also edited Knut Hamsun's Hunger and Pan (2023) both translated by Terence Cave for Oxford World's Classics.