I have no respect to merchants and preachers; as far as I’m concerned, their only talent is coming up with the right word at the right time. What is a professional preacher, really? He is a kind of middleman who for the wrong reasons tries to make people buy his goods. The more he sells, the more his stock rises. The louder he hawks his wares, the larger his business grows.

Hamsun was eventually invited to meet with Hitler; during the meeting he complained about the German civilian administrator in Norway Josef Terboven and ask that imprisoned Norwegian citizens be released enraging Hitler. The semiautobiographical work described a young writer's descent into near madness as a result of hunger and poverty in the Norwegian capital of Kristiania (modern name Oslo). The melodramatic story follows a poet Bjørger and his love for Laura.

The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun". The young Hamsun objected to realism and naturalism. Hamsun is considered the "leader of the Neo-Romantic revolt at the turn of the [20th] century" with works such as Hunger (1890) Mysteries (1892) Pan (1894) and Victoria (1898).