Hunger

"Hunger" by Knut Hamsun is a gripping novel that plunges into the dark depths of a writer's life in a late 19th-century city, where he fights a desperate battle against poverty and the crushing weight of his own ambitions. We meet our main character as he wakes up in a small attic room, face-to-face with his own despair, as he hungers for food and grapples with larger questions about who he is, he tries to find work and meaning but runs into constant failures and solitude. As he walks through the streets, the story makes the reader examine ambition, the pain of being hungry, and the difficult search for purpose in a world that doesn't seem to care. It’s a stark look at a man's mind and soul, questioning what it means to be alive and what humans really want.