The Great Hunger
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who enjoy Nordic literature and late nineteenth-century European fiction
- Those interested in individual ambition, class mobility, and self-knowledge
- Readers looking for a classic novel of moderate length with a steady narrative
- Literature lovers drawn to metaphorical themes such as "spiritual hunger"
Not a good fit for
- Readers expecting a strong plot with fast-paced twists
- Those who prefer light, healing, and emotionally bright reading experiences
- Beginners who find older translations or English-language styles hard to tolerate
Reading tips
- Read the opening chapters first, noting how the protagonist's desires are ignited by concrete events.
- In the middle section, jot down each of his self-justifications, then look back after finishing to see whether they hold up.
- Treat "hunger" as a thread, marking the passages that correspond to its material and spiritual dimensions.
- Leave a little time to dwell on the ending before deciding whether you sympathize with the protagonist.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
Is The Great Hunger based on real historical events?
The protagonist is unlikable—will that affect the reading?
Is this novel suited to being read in one sitting?
Comments
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About the author
Johan Bojer (1872–1959) was a Norwegian writer. Public information about his life and nationality is limited in Chinese-language sources; what can be confirmed is that he left two works, The Great Hunger and The Power of a Lie. The titles of these novels already suggest the themes he explored: the struggle for survival and for land, symbolized by hunger, and the moral question of how a lie comes into being and comes to dominate human relationships. His writing tends to carry universal human issues through concrete situations, with direct narrative and clear themes, bearing the weight and social concern common to realist literature. Although the available material is not enough to outline his full body of work, the titles and the limited catalog information indicate that Bojer placed individual fates under the pressure of survival and ethical tests, with a cautionary force for readers.
