When it was first published in 1917, Growth of the Soil was immediately recognized as a masterpiece. Ninety years later it remains a transporting literary experience. In the story of Isak, who leaves his village to clear a homestead and raise a family amid the untilled tracts of the Norwegian highlands, Knut Hamsun evokes the elemental bond between humans and the land. Newly rendered into English by the acclaimed translator and Hamsun scholar Sverre Lyngstad, Hamsun’s novel is a work of preternatural calm, stern beauty, and biblical power. It is the crowning achievement of one of the greatest European writers of the twentieth century.