The Women at the Pump

Knut Hamsun

Jun 2012 · Souvenir Press

About this ebook

In their gossiping at the pump the women express the poetry, the tawdriness and, above all, the sheer vitality of life in Hamsun's small coastal town. A birth (where did those brown eyes come from?); a marriage (shotgun?); a death in strange circumstances (the victim flattened by a barrel of whale oil); the up-and-down career of the town's leading citizen and philanderer; the elderly spinster's pregnancy; the sinking of the steamship that is the town's pride and joy. Above all, talk centres on the doings of Oliver Andersen and the large family that he and his wife contrive to create despite growing suspicions that his mysterious accident at sea has deprived him of more than a leg... The Women at the Pump overflows with a prodigality of invention and sardonic humour typical of Hamsun's work at its best. First published in 1920, the year Hamsun won the Nobel Prize for Literature, it has a universal quality that transcends time and place. Hamsun's women live on the Norwegian coast but their soulmates flourish in every small community around the world.

About the author

Knut Pedersen Hamsun was born in Gudbrandsdalen, Norway on August 4, 1859 and grew up in poverty in Hamarøy. At the age of 17, he became an apprentice to a ropemaker and also began to dabble in writing. This eventually became his full-time career. He wrote numerous books during his lifetime including The Intellectual Life of Modern America, Hunger, and Pan. In 1920, his novel Growth of the Soil, a book describing the attraction and honesty of working with the land, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. As a supporter of Hitler and the Nazi Occupation of Norway during World War II, Hamsun was charged with treason for his affiliation with the party after the war ended. His property was seized, he was placed under psychiatric observation, and his last years were spent in poverty. He died on February 19, 1952. A 15-volume compilation of his complete works was published posthumously in 1954.