Tales Of Love & Loss

A fishing boat plies off Newfoundland, crewed by immigrants with no common language; a young boy finds a tooth in a graveyard and is hunted by its owner; a flighty young woman drives a man to murder and suicide . . . . With twenty stories ranging over every imaginable human emotion and situation, Tales of love and loss, brilliantly translated by Robert Ferguson, offers a rare treat for all lovers of great writing. Knut Hamsun published only three collections of short stories during his life, and after 1906 abandoned the form altogether. In contrast to his world – famous novels these stories are hardly known outside Norway and most of those in this collection are now translated into English for the first time. They provide fascinating commentaries on the novels Hamsun was writing at the time and some already contain echoes of his much later work. Alive by turns with humour; melancholy, tenderness and rough lawlessness, the variety is constantly refreshing and sparkling with psychological insights.