Yet in spite of a sinuous web of mysteries that surrounds Nagel, Hamsun manages to effectivelyĭraw our attention to other supporting characters who inhabit the town as well.

That which perplexes us can also be seductive, and Nagel leaves us with more questions than answers from the very beginning. Though his evasiveness is frustrating, it is also engaging.

Nevertheless, he leaves both the townspeople and us readers with many questions about where he has come from, what has happened in his past, and why he has come to this particular coastal town. He evades personal questions although he does inform the hotel keeper at the Central Hotel that he’s an agronomist returning from travels abroad and that he plans to stay for at least the next two or three months. Although the residents in the town did not welcome him in a particularly cordial manner, he is impervious to their general lack of enthusiasm. Nagel’s belongings consisted of two small trunks, a suitcase, a satchel, two coats–one of which was fur, a violin case, and a small bag with his initials in pearls.

His shoulders were very broad he was between twenty-eight and thirty, but definitely not older, although his hair was beginning to turn gray at the temples.” On one finger he wore a plain ring of lead or iron. “He was below average in height his face was dark-complexioned, with deep brown eyes which had a strange expression, and a soft, rather feminine mouth. Hamsun’s initial description of Nagel paints a portrait of a rather ordinary individual: Moreover, we are left wondering, at the end, if it was actually meant to. His arrival in a small Norwegian town in 1891, with no visible aim or purpose, is the first piece in a puzzle that doesn’t ever quite fit together. At the core of the story is Johan Nagel, easily one of the most enigmatic characters in literary history. This is a book in which nothing is quite as it seems to be, and the more closely the reader examines it or tries to make sense of it, the more inexplicable it becomes. To dissect Knut Hamsun’s Mysteries as one would an ordinary novel is impossible. Alexis Wingate - The Mystery of Mysteries

Knut hamsun mysteries