Pan

'When the snow water had broken crevices open in the mountain a shot or even just a sharp cry was enough to tear loose a huge slab and send it toppling.'

Lieutenant Thomas Glahn spends a summer in northern Norway, where the midnight sun triggers a short but intense release of energies. Living out of a rudimentary hut on the edge of the forest, he pursues a solitary existence, hunting, fishing, and engaging intermittently with the inhabitants of the nearby coastal village. Among these is Edvarda, daughter of the wealthy local trader Herr Mack. Their mutual attraction rapidly develops into an erotic fascination shot through with suspicions and jealousies; a series of fraught encounters culminates in violent actions with unforeseen consequences.

First published in 1894, Pan was an immediate success and remains a classic of Norwegian literature. It embodies many of the distinctive features of Hamsun's early works, in particular a rejection of psychological stereotypes and a style infused by what Hamsun called a 'poetry of the nerves'. Terence Cave's new translation restores the power and virtuosity of Hamsun's original and includes an illuminating introduction and explanatory notes.

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Tore Rem, Professor of British literature in the Department of Literature, Area Studies, and European Languages, University of Oslo

Tore Rem is Professor of British literature in the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, University of Oslo. His books include Dickens, Melodrama and the Parodic Imagination (2002), Henry Gibson/Henrik Ibsen (2006), and a two-volume biography of the Norwegian playwright and public intellectual Jens Bjørneboe. He is the author of many articles on Ibsen's English-language reception, and is engaged in the research project 'The Scandinavian Moment in World Literature.' He is currently Visiting Fellow at St. Catherine's College, University of Oxford.

Terence Cave is Emeritus Professor of French Literature, University of Oxford, and Emeritus Research Fellow, St John's College. He is the author of The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (1979), Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (1988), Mignon's Afterlives: Crossing Cultures from Goethe to the Twenty-First Century (2011), and many other studies in French and comparative literature. He is currently director of the project 'Literature as an Object of Knowledge', based at the St John's College Research Centre.