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Jan 11, 2012

s.penkevich rated it:

Hamsun’s aptly named second novel, Mysteries, is a dazzling, dark look into human nature and man’s psyche. It is no surprise that Henry Miller claimed that Mysteries was ’closer to me than any book I have read,’ this novel is so probing and insightful that you feel it begin to pick your own mind as the pages churn by. Written in 1892, just 2 years following Hunger, this novel once again demonstrates Hamsun’s signature frantic yet serene prose while showcasing Hamsun as a Modernist far ahead of More...

10 comments like (10 people liked it)

Nov 13, 2009

Manny rated it:

I refused to read Hamsun for a long time, on the grounds that he was a Nazi sympathizer. But I started getting interested in modern Norwegian literature a couple of years ago, and in the end I had to give in. You just can't avoid him; he's referred to everywhere. And if I find him hard to deal with, I'm comforted by the fact that it's much worse for the Norwegians.

Let me expand on that a bit. I'm English by birth, and I've also lived a fair amount of my life in Sweden and the US. Non More...

25 comments like (17 people liked it)

Jul 16, 2008

Bryan rated it:

this was fabulous; incredible; superlative-full. i have rarely come across such passionate writing; the passion coupling with the character of nagel, a solid plot...the scope of the subject matter is large, and i would need to read the book again to gain a more full understanding of what is going on, on the implications of hte story, in just grasping as much as i can of what i feel Hamsun was talking about, relating that to life. this is something that needs to be meditated upon, i think. or at More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Apr 07, 2011

James rated it:

I was introduced to the author Knut Hamsun by reading his first novel, Hunger. It is a Dostoevskian tale of a young journalist who is literally starving to death. His story is about trying to write and live while not even being able to afford a scrap of food, pawning his vest to be able to survive a few more days. It is a searing story that one does not forget. I had reread that book about a year ago, but still had not tackled any of Hamsun's other works before I had picked this book. My expecta More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 13, 2009

Choupette added it

I listen, Jessica! (sometimes)

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 03, 2011

Hellera rated it:

Short essay for school:

Knut Hamsuni „Müsteeriumid“

Kuni päris lõpuni välja tundus mulle, et Nagel valetab rohkem kui asi väärt on. Jäi mulje nagu rikuks ta oma suure aatelise (ja ülitobeda) piinlemisega ära ka teiste inimeste elud, teeks seda täiesti tahtlikult ja süümepiinadeta. Võib-olla tahtes neid mõtlema panna, kuid väga võimalik, et siiski ainult seetõttu, et mitte üksi kannatada. Mis on inimlik, ent mõtlematu ja õel.

On ka muidugi võimalik, et ta ei valetanud, More...

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Oct 16, 2009

David rated it:

Henry Miller described Mysteries as ‘…closer to me than any other book I have read’. I’m no Henry Miller, but it is a very dear book to me too, quite like a close friend. It seems that there is no getting to the bottom of it, no matter how many times you engage with it, just like a human being. On a first reading it is seems a mere catalogue of disconnected events taking place in small town, with a stranger called Nagel at their centre, who has arrived on a steamer. He comes and goes and beh More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 15, 2009

Peter added it

An extraordinary book that deals with everything dangerous in a man: arrogance and eros. It moves along so quickly as to be breathtaking. Every surprise is expected. The protagonist is something like an a-political anarchist. The tone of the book is wonderfully iconoclastic and in many ways proto-moral. The protagonist arrives ahead of christianity. I am not willing to say much more about the story at the moment. The book is still sinking in. Often Hunger, Mysteries and Pan are put together as h More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 17, 2011

Jim rated it:

I've always wanted to read a book by an author named Knut. But first let me give you 200 crowns and I'll tell you a story that happened to me in San Francisco. First, though, I'm in love with you and I can't live without you. I can't really play the violin even though I have a violin case but everybody in town wants me to play. You're really a very sinister person underneath - it might not look like it now, but you will turn out badly - like The Midget. The dastardly midget replaced my prussic a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 05, 2011

R. Z. rated it:

It's easy to see why Hamsun won the Nobel prize for literature. This stream-of-consciousness novel is an account of the bizarre thinking of a strange man who suddenly appears in a tiny Norwegian village and manipulates individuals by his confusing behavior. The story is disturbing to say the least. It's well translated by Gerry Bothner and easy to read which is helpful, because it's better to read it quickly; at least I thought so as I didn't want to get caught by the strange reasoning of Nig More...

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Nov 25, 2011

Vince rated it:

It's a mystery to me why this book has such a high rating. I found it unrealistic and unengaging. It was hard to relate to the main character or anyone else. Someone once criticised Kerouac's writing for being typing but Kerouac had soul. This is typing without soul. It's just an incoherent rambling for a couple hundred pages. Hamsun has been quoted so many times by reknowned people so I kept plodding on with this drivel thinking I must be missing something. But there comes a point where you hav More...

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Aug 30, 2011

Timmy rated it:

Shooting from the hip here..........Not really sure what to make of this yet and will have to read some more Hamsun before deciding. While the book is almost a point blank shout down my alley, a pie recipe with my name on it, I can't definitively get a bit of Gerber's out of my head. My anti-hero (and Hamsun) clearly feels some fabulous paganism, plays transcendental nature over hypocritical humanity from a little black and white box, cries at the thought of what will happen as technology and s More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 03, 2011

Cliff rated it:

'Mysteries' is a novel originally published in the 1890s, and written in Norwegian.

A man arrives in a unexpectedly in a small Norwegian coastal town, where flags are flying to mark the engagement of the town beauty, Dagny Kielland, to a naval officer.

This new arrival, Johan Nagel, who appears to be financially independent and to have come for no specific purpose, seems at first impressive. He has an inquiring mind and is physically active, going for long walks in the woods. More...

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Jan 21, 2012

Kim rated it:

Het eerste wat me verteld werd zodra ik Knut Hamsun opzocht op internet was dat hij de pro-Nazi regering in Noorwegen steunde. Het bleek zelfs een soort trauma te zijn voor de Noren en na de oorlog werd hij psychisch onderzocht om te kijken of hij wel goed in zijn hoofd was tijdens zijn ontmoetingen met Hitler en Goebbels.

Ergens maakt het me niets uit wat die man deed naast het schrijven van zijn boeken, het is al helemaal moeilijk om je voor te stellen hoe het was om te leven in een More...

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Nov 03, 2008

Zack rated it:

Every Knut Hamsun book is totally different from every other. I mean, this one's superior to Growth of the Soil, even possibly to Hunger, but it's such a different kind of book comparisons aren't really fair. For some reason, another Hamsun book, Pan, also totally different from any of the others, is dedicated by him to Johan Nilssen Nagel, the (fictional?) protagonist of Mysteries. This is his second book, written right after Hunger, and carries the same kind of fire, but this time way more i More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 08, 2008

Madhuri rated it:

I will make my character laugh where sensible people think he ought to cry.

And why? Because my hero is no character, no 'type,' ... but a complex, modern being.

- Knut Hamsun

I don't know whether Hamsun spoke these words to describe the character of Nagel in his work Mysteries, but I can say that in Nagel, he was successful in what he intended to carry out. Even though he does not want to call his hero a character, I found the (anti?)protagonist of Mysteries More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 01, 2010

Justin rated it:

Time is short nowadays and alas, my reviews must shorten subsequently. If you're not already familiar with Knut Hamsun, chances are good you'll never stumble across him unless some wise friend turns you onto him. He was a Norwegian, a Nobel Prize winner, heralded for decades of his time, but eventually scorned and by many dismissed, when he, bafflingly, became a Nazi sympathizer.

His work holds up, however, when separated from the artist. Of all the writers I have read from the turn of More...

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Mar 05, 2010

Barry rated it:

2/16 - What a beautifully bizarre book! Much more plotty than Hunger and using a small cast of characters, its scenes/episodes still serve mainly as springboards for manic monologue-diatribe-ish things which are disturbing and/or hilarious. It suffered for me a bit with this main female character the protagonist has progressive exchanges with, which pay off amazingly (everything after the hankerchief scene was mega) and dovetail awesomely with the other two or three narrative strands. This read More...

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Nov 10, 2011

Thi rated it:

I adore Knut Hamsun's ability to write such realistic internal monologue. A friend recommended this book to me when I told him that one day in the lab, I was suddenly hit with the paranoia that I had gotten a drop of hydrofluoric acid on myself, and was somewhat convinced that there was a chance I could die right there. One of the scenes in this book describes perfectly what that feeling is like and what ridiculous thoughts run through your mind during such a moment. Definitely will go back and More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 03, 2009

Lindsey rated it:

I wrote Knut Hamsun's name into my reading list when I was going through a Henry Miller phase because I read in some autobiographical blurb that Hamsun was one of Miller's favorite writers. I can definitely see the connection; Hamsun is sort of a soft-core predecessor to Miller (or at least this particular book is). Problem is, what I like about Miller is how hard-core he is. This just didn't feel quite as vital.

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Jun 18, 2008

Niina rated it:

Mysteries, of all of Knut Hamsun's books that I've read so far, is my favorite. On the back blurb, Henry Miller calls it "rhapsodic," which seems kind of a joke on the narrator's behalf but also kind of true. Hamsun has a way with not making pages and pages of description seem dull.

All of the characters in Mysteries are completely developed -- even the female love interests, which is something that he didn't always carry out in earlier works. And the main character -- he More...

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Nov 04, 2008

Geoff rated it:

Though not a perfect book, Hamsun has again created a unique character, a unique atmosphere, and something resembling Musil's "man without qualities" in the person of Nagel. Mysteries, in some ways, supercedes "Hunger" in scope and depth of writing, but is much more disorganized and not as consistent in tone. Both Hunger and Mysteries simmered and seethed with nervousness, desperation, exhausted illumination, and fascinating strangeness, but where Hunger flowed essentially More...

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May 21, 2011

Alfredo rated it:

A masterpiece by a writer who wrote in terse, modern prose on a par with Hemingway's and Mann's almost 30 years before... And who, to boot, used interior monologue successfully way before Joyce and Woolf... This novel in particular makes me think of David Lynch.

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Jul 06, 2010

bistra rated it:

Така нареченият първи модерен роман ми се стори доста скучен, хаотичен, превидим, досаден; четеш, четеш и за какво? Последните 50 страници си ги спестих.

4 comments like

Mar 06, 2011

Becky rated it:

I love characters like Nagel, who show people who they are, a sort of walking-talking truth serum. But in the end, he began to repulse me. I wanted him to be good on top of everything else. (So what did he show me about me?)

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Sep 04, 2008

Joe rated it:

A strange mixture of Kafka, Dostoyevsky and Camus. I guess influenced by Dostoyevsky and Kafka, and influencing Camus, who was of course, influenced himself by Kafka and Dostoyevsky. The use of stream of consciousness as a tool is extensive, but different in that it does not necessarily reveal truth, as the characters lie to themselves and deceive themselves, or at least the main character does. He has a tremendous impact on people due ton his odd and self-dramatising behaviour. But his cons More...

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Oct 04, 2011

Aaber rated it:

One of the first truly surreal modern psychological novels; Mysteries is my favorite book by Knut Hamsun. It's as exciting as a well paced thriller, quite curious and overall filled with memorable characters.

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Nov 14, 2009

John rated it:

The mad protagonist of this novel was not as effective for me as the protagonist of Hamsun's "Hunger," nor did the whole thing work as well as some of the other Hamsun novels I have read.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 12, 2009

Allan rated it:

Someone gave this book to my wife with the note that the main character, Nagel, was the literary embodiment of me. The person who gave this book may not be my biggest fan.

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May 22, 2009

Alex rated it:

Fantastic read from beginning to end. The human character in many angles is revealed in such a simple yet exciting way. I got giddy half way through it and haven't stopped since.

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