Knut Hamsun's Hunger has come to be regarded as one of the major modernist novels, anticipating and influencing much fiction that was to follow, from Joyce and Kafka to Camus and Kelman.

Hunger is a compelling trip into the mind of a young writer who is driven by starvation to constantly fluctuating extremes of euphoria and despair. It is a study of the psychological hinterlands - the very edges of experience - where few writers have the courage to tread.