Description
Book SynopsisDiscusses Knut Hamsun's political and cultural ideas together with an analysis of his highly regarded writing. This book reveals the ways in which messages of racism and sexism appear in plays, fiction, and none-too-subtle nonfiction produced by a prolific author over the course of his long career.
Trade Review"By employing 'the bifocal lens of race and gender' and by including less canonical Hamsun texts, Zagar offers a persuasive account of Hamsun's ideological position and illuminates his career-long participation in reactionary, racist, and patriarchal discourse."
-- Dean Krouk * Scandinavian-Canadian Studies *
"Monika Zagar was provoked to write Knut Hamsun: The Dark Side to counter the 'white-washing' of Hamsun which, as she sees it, continues to this day."
* London Review of Books *
"A superb academic study."
-- Matthew Shaer * Los Angeles Times *
Table of Contents1. Discourses of Race and Primitivism in Scandinavia
2. Hamsun's Women as Scapegoats for Modernity's Sins
3. Imagining the Indians
4. Imagining Black and White
5. A Taste of the Orient
6. Imagining the Sly Magic "Lapps"
7. Imagining Degeneration and Revolution: The Interwar Period and Occupation
8. The Rhetoric of Defense in Hamsun's Paa gjengrodde stier
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
