Born in 1859 in Norway, Knut Hamsun is the author of Mysteries, Victoria, The Wanderer, The Women at the Pump, Tales of Loss, and more. Growth of the Soil is his best known novel which sees the wanderer from his earlier tale come to work on the land. Growth of the Soil is a classic of European literature, one of the seminal novels of the twentieth century. It is the story of Isak, a worker of the land, with its roots in man's deepest myths about the struggle to cultivate the land and make it fertile. The novel moves at the pace of the passing seasons, and with the growth of the crops, on which the characters' lives depend. Hamsun's themes of individual freedom, and the fundamental human need to reconcile man with the natural world, speak even more resonantly now than when the novel was first published.