Mysteries

The main character, like the title says, is a mysterious guy. Nagel arrives in a Norwegian town with plenty of money and goodwill, and though kind of an eccentric, seems to start to fit in with the local crowd. But it's almost as if Nagel only just landed on Earth, and while he wishes to live correctly, has no idea how to do it. Published at the end of the last century, Mysteries is an existentialist novel, very strange, often very funny, often sad and largely asking the question, "Why live?"

"Mysteries is as immediate and haunting as last night's dreams (or nightmares)." --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, *The New York Times

"Hamsun, perhaps more than any other writer, prefigured the techniques and attitudes of modernism." --Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek*