America and Knut Hamsun

Abstract

The life of the great Norwegian writer and Nobel Prize laureate Knut Hamsun (1859-1952) turned out to be so dramatic and turbulent that it remains a subject of great research interest. Hamsun visited America twice, but his attempts to gain a foothold there were unsuccessful, which probably contributed to the development of anti-American sentiments in his mind. This was especially strongly reflected in Ham­sun's work, published in 1889 – The Cultural Life of Modern America. The book, which is quite skill­fu­lly written from a stylistic point of view, is at the same time distinguished by its harsh, and not inf­requently overtly tendentious, criticism of American lifestyle, politics, and art.