A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings

Book excerpt: A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings Knut Hamsun Related to and sometimes paired with Hamsun's Under the Autumn Stars, this beautifully lyric fiction picks up with the same characters as the other book, but is set in time six years later. The central character of the former novel, Knut Pedersen (Hamsun's real name), is more an observer in this work. His former friend Grindhusen has grown from stubborn independence to a shifty and vacillating man; and his companion Lars Falkenberg has dwindled into a small land-holder with a perpetually pregnant wife from whom he is deeply estranged. These two comedians play out a tragi-comedy that is painful through the very irony and humaneness with which Hamsun paints his figures. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.