Hunger: A Novel (FSG Classics)

A true classic of modern literature that has been described as "one of the most disturbing novels in existence" (Time Out), Hunger is the story of a Norwegian artist who wanders the streets, struggling on the edge of starvation. As hunger overtakes him, he slides inexorably into paranoia and despair. The descent into madness is recounted by the unnamed narrator in increasingly urgent and disjointed prose, as he loses his grip on reality.

Arising from Hamsun's belief that literature ought to be about the mysterious workings of the human mind -- an attempt, he wrote, to describe "the whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow" -- Hunger is a landmark work that pointed the way toward a new kind of novel.

"The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun. They were all Hamsun's disciples: Thomas Mann and Arthur Schnitzler . . . and even such American writers are Fitzgerald and Hemingway." ―Isaac Bashevis Singer

Robert Bly (1926-2021) was an American poet, author, activist, translator, and leader of the mythopoetic men’s movement. His book Iron John: A Book About Men was a key text of the movement, and spent 62 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. He won the 1968 National Book Award for poetry for his book The Light Around the Body, and was named Minnesota’s first poet laureate in 2008. He also received the Maurice English Poetry Award, and the Poetry Society of America’s Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement.

Bly’s other poetic works include More Than True: The Wisdom of Fairy Tales, Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, and Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems, 1950-2013.