Knut Hamsun is a Nobel Prize laureate, a writer admired by all famous minds in Russia. Hamsun's popularity in our country in the 19th and early 20th centuries was so enormous that no sooner had his books been published in Norway than they were immediately translated into Russian and sold with amazing speed. The incredible “demand for Hamsun” continued until 1934, and then a period of complete oblivion began. It was unacceptable to talk about Hamsun, especially after the 1940s. He ceased to exist not only for readers, but also for literary critics and literary historians. The work of the Norwegian writer was under a kind of ban both in Russia and in Norway itself due to Hamsun’s support for Nazism. The author of humanistic works is a fascist?.. The author of the book, philologist Natalia Budur, does not try to “explain” Hamsun, but accepts him as he is, with all his advantages and disadvantages. That is why the biography written by her is closely intertwined with the essential questions of the life of the human spirit, which this great, but at some point lost, Norwegian posed during his long earthly journey.

Natalia Budur. Hamsun. Publishing house "Young Guard". Moscow. 2008.