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Norway's Soul: Re-evaluating Knut Hamsun

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11/04/2013

BBC Radio 4 - Norway's Soul: Re-evaluating Knut Hamsun

The unlikely career and startling fall from grace of a great writer.

Per Kristian Olsen explores the career and work of a great writer, Knut Hamsun, who beat Joyce and Woolf to Modernism but ended his life in disgrace after his support of the Nazis.

The unlikely career and Startling fall from grace of a great writer.

The Norwegian author Knut Hamsun was a self taught farm boy who beat
James Joyce and Virginia Woolf to Modernism. With his groundbreaking
novel, Hunger, published in 1890, he revolutionized world literature.
By 1922, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, and was one of
the most famous writers in the world, feted by everyone from Kafka to
Hemmingway. Yet he ended his life in poverty and disgrace after his
public admiration of the Nazis. He even sent Goebbels his Nobel Prize
medal. Today he is largely unknown outside of his native country. Per
Kristian Olsen considers the best of Hamsun's writing against the
worst of his political thoughts and deeds and asks whether it is
possible to separate life from art.



Presenter: Per Kristian Olsen
Producer: Jessica Treen.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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