Mysteries
Ratings4
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.8
The first complete English translation of the Nobel Prize-winner’s literary masterpiece A Penguin Classic Mysteries is the story of Johan Nilsen Nagel, a mysterious stranger who suddenly turns up in a small Norwegian town one summer—and just as suddenly disappears. Nagel is a complete outsider, a sort of modern Christ treated in a spirit of near parody. He condemns the politics and thought of the age, brings comfort to the “insulted and injured,” and gains the love of two women suggestive of the biblical Mary and Martha. But there is a sinister side of him: in his vest he carries a vial of prussic acid... The novel creates a powerful sense of Nagel's stream of thought, as he increasingly withdraws into the torture chamber of his own subconscious psyche. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Reviews with the most likes.
“Everything is a sham. One kind of sham is just as good as the other.”
I think this is the funniest book I've ever read. I'd compare reading this book to listening to your deranged drunk uncle's ramblings. In a way, it's also a literary shitpost, with long tirades and passages that lead to absolutely nothing, and it's hilarious. Like your deranged drunk uncle, it's mental and hilarious, but also sad and poignant. The dialogue and language also remind me of listening to old-timers and older coworkers stories back in my hometown, which makes it very life-like to me.
Nagel must also be one of the most intriguing characters out there. The man is a walking contradiction, much like the book itself. Sometimes he seems like a crazy charlatan, while at others he seems like the only sane person in the world. Everyone in town, except for Nagel's counterpart Minutten, is entrenched in everyday-life, within the walls of material existence. They all care earnestly about politics, business, science, and literature et cetera, while Nagel, though quite knowledgeable and intelligent, stands fervently in opposition to it all. One might say he does this just to get a rise out of people and for laughs, but lines such as “I am sure I am right, but it's so painful and sad that everyone else doesn't think as I do.” hints at a deeper existential pain. In many ways, he lives an impossible existence. He lives in a world where mysteries, such as himself, are just amusements that no one takes seriously and which must always be unveiled and killed off.
There's a lot more to discuss and talk about with this dense self-contradictory book, but for now I will just say that I love it for its serious unseriousness.
A strange mixture of Kafka, Dostoyevsky and Camus. I guess influenced by Dostoyevsky and Kafka, and influencing Camus, who was of course, influenced himself by Kafka and Dostoyevsky. The use of stream of consciousness as a tool is extensive, but different in that it does not necessarily reveal truth, as the characters lie to themselves and deceive themselves, or at least the main character does. He has a tremendous impact on people due ton his odd and self-dramatising behaviour. But his constant changing of his own story of himself makes it difficult to know what to think, which I believe is Hamsun???s point. Entertaining, with the added bit of knowing that it is not as straightforward as it seems.
