Product Description

'Mysteries' is a classic of European literature, one of the seminal novels of the twentieth century. It is the story of Johan Nagel, a strange youg man who arrives to spend a summer in a small Norwegian coastal town. His presence acts as a catalyst for the hidden impulses, concealed thoughts and darker instincts of the local people. Cursed with the ability to understand the human soul, especially his own, Nagel can foresee, but cannot prevent, his own sef-destruction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30139 in Books
• Published on: 1992-02-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 340 pages

Henry Miller
Mysteries "is closer to me than any other book I've read."

Rebecca West
Hamsun has the qualities that belong to the very great, the completest omniscience about human nature.

Times Literary Supplement
The most outstanding Norwegian writer since Ibsen.

Customer Reviews

Knut Hamsun - Mysteries
Remarkable! After reading Hunger, I thought anything I read by Hamsun could only be nearly as good. I was quite wrong. Mysteries is, possibly not better than that pivotal masterpiece, but is withotu doubt as good. Mysteries is a by turns breezily written and then deeply philosophical, in the most easily accessible way. Maddening, warm, funny, sad, moving, completely perplexing and always compelling, Mysteries is a fascinating book with a fascinating lead character, whose motivations and actions remain enigmatic to the last chapter. Nagel is one of the best characters I've come across in fiction, seemingly schizophrenic, bi-polar, yet visionary, iconoclastic, and full of brio and life. It's without doubt that he makes this plotless, superb novel what it is. Mysteries is a unique book, a chinese box, a beautiful and wise story that leaves you in the dark to the last. A wonderful reading experience, this was.

Mysteries is one of my favourite books
The arrival in an unremarkable Norwegian town of Johan Nilsen Nagel, wearing a loud yellow suit and toting a violin case, is the first of many mysteries to unfold in Hamsun's masterwork, set and written in the late 1800s. Within the first few pages yet more enigmatic individuals, objects and events are introduced: a death in the woods, a white-haired beauty, a bottle of poison, allusions to a long-dead romance, and documents hinting at great wealth.

Nagel upsets the status quo of life in this "town-of-no-importance", at turns engaging and enraging the citizenry with his curious blend of brutal honesty and wild prevarication. "Man is certainly an ass," says Nagel, "You can lead him by the nose wherever you want him to go." Indeed, Nagel is a master of mind games, not necessarily malicious in nature and often employed in demonstration. Yet, in this, he is a paradox, whose lies are not always lies and whose motivations are often hard to discern.

As the story develops, more mysteries are introduced. There is a veiled woman who visits for a short time, a dead dog, and a broken chair that arouses unfathomable desire. Most mysterious of all though is Nagel himself, his actions fluctuating between the extremely philanthropic and the frighteningly sinister. Nagel is a non-conformist who is often dismayed with the company of his fellow men and seeks communion with nature during extended periods in the wild forests surrounding the town. These mental and physical wanderings provide an insight into the mind of this engaging character.

Despite occasional forays into politics, Mysteries is largely a social commentary and exploration of what it is means for Nagel, and others, to be outsiders - at times satisfied and at times disenchanted by solitude. Detached and voyeuristic, Nagel is highly perceptive but emotionally and socially flawed. He is like a man capable of understanding the structure of a crystal but who would shatter it in clumsy fingers should he attempt to pick it up.

Nagel's obsessions with the town's women, married or otherwise, and his hot-cold relationship with the meek and outwardly-simple `Midget' are central to the novel and contribute to his wild mood swings and descent to the edge of reason. Following a momentous birthday, Nagel's behaviour becomes increasingly eccentric. His drunken rants, in which he expounds on politics and waxes philosophical about the so-called `great men' of the day, become more frequent and controversial.

The crisp and clear narrative of Mysteries is enhanced by occasional first-person streams of consciousness detailing Nagel's daydreams, and vivid descriptions of his frequent hallucinatory nightmares. First published in 1892, Mysteries is just part of Hamsun's remarkable canon, considerably before its time in style and content and of great inspiration to many later writers including literary heavyweights and fellow Nobel laureates Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, Ernest "Hamsun taught me to write" Hemingway, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, who said "the whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun."

Hamsun's Greatest Work
As the other reviewers have described, this is a novel on the edge: a book on the cusp of the death of the old order of certainty, and the birth of a new and frightening one of both increased individual freedom and confusion. There is no meaningful authority and man is to make his own stumbling way through an often unsettling life.
In his early work(Hunger, Mysteries, Pan), Hamsun is a kind of son of Dostoevsky as a prophet of this new age, and though like everyone else, Hamsun lacks a little of the depth of the Russian's awesome vision and profundity, it could perhaps be argued that in Hamsun's reduced scale he is perhaps a greater artist. Interestingly in his later larger works his greatness as an artist divining the strange depths fades somewhat, and the edgy spiritual aspect of these early works less present. This sense of risk and uncertainty most apparent in Mysteries, Hamsun's greatest work- a story of strange depths somewhere in smalltown Scandinavia.

So if all this doesn't sound much like a review, read Mysteries! It's great.