The Great Hunger download epub

The Norwegian writer, Johan Bojer (pronounced Bo-yer) is probably best known for his 1925 novel, The Emigrants, about a family of Norwegians making their way in the desolate plains of 1880's North Dakota. This book should not be confused with Swedish writer, Vilmelm Moberg's initial volume of his epic series chronicling the history of Swedish settlers in America (which was adapted for the screen by Ingemar Bergman). Bojer's book was more personal and optimistic. Optimism, in fact, is a quality of many of Bojer's books. It was a quality of literature which fell out of favor, at least in America, after the stock market crash of 1929. However, at his peak, Bojer was lauded by many of his contemporaries including James Branch Cabell, Rabindranath Tagore, and John Galsworthy.

At the beginning of The Great Hunger, Bojer's 1918 effort, Peer Troen, a motherless, but industrious child, along with his three buddies, Klaus, Peter, and Martin, take a keel out on the fjord to fish. Although in a small row boat, they struggle to haul in a great Greenland shark. In the chaos that ensues, the shark, thrashing and wounded, manages to grab hold of Peer's arm, but Peter swiftly thrusts a knife into the beast, killing it and in turn saving Peer's limb. This scene may serve as a sort of foreshadowing for the rest of Peer's life.

Peer, much like his creator, Bojer, is raised in a series of poor foster homes in rural Norway. After his real father dies, and Peer (Holm now; he's changed his surname to his father's), feeling the need to grieve, is driven away from the funeral, he searches out his half sister, Louise, and brings her to stay with him at his flat. He is already a protector at the young age of 16. After some early misfortune, Peer is able to attend a top engineering college. It is there that he discovers his great hunger for knowledge, the call of the "steel" and the "fire", that drives him through his early career as a master engineer. After graduation, Peer forms a strong bond in both friendship and business with his old pal Klaus and his newly found step brother, Ferdinand Holm. It is Peer's great desire for knowledge, and to contribute to the advancement of mankind, that leads him to Egypt as an integral cog in the engineering of the Old Aswan Dam. But when he returns, a successful and much wealthier man, he's confronted by Langberg, an old college chum. They speak of the state of technology as it existed then. Langberg says:

"Lord! What I'd like to know is, where mankind are making for, that they're in such a hurry"

Peer replies:

"That the Nile Barage has doubled the production of corn in Egypt -- created the possibilities of life for millions of human beings -- is that nothing?"

Langberg follows:

"My good fellow, do you really think there aren't enough fools on this earth already. Have we too little wailing and misery and discontent and class hatred as it is? Why must we go about to double it?"

It takes a while, but Peer comes to understand Langberg's pre-humanistic philosophy. He marries, has three children, and flourishes on a large farm. But soon the sirens of the steel and fire are calling to him again. Then in a series of questionable decisions, he crashes, losing everything; the shark of his boyhood is back in the boat. That Peer never loses sight of his "great hunger" when that shark latches on again, but rather adapts to it and moves spiritually onward and upward, is testament to the optimistic view taken by the author; a view that had fallen out of favor in his day; a view we would do well to hold in a nobler esteem during these volatile times.

~Book Jones~ 4.5 stars

Should be called the great murder of the Irish

It was a tedious read - I couldn't finish it. Wording was difficult to follow. It was far too long.

Not famished in the physical sense as one might assume from the novel's title, this story examines an individual's yearning for knowledge in two areas that were judged by many intellectuals in the early twentieth century as being mutually exclusive: hard-science and religion.

Our main character, Peer is a young lad who, deserted by his parents, is tossed about like second-hand clothing from one foster home to the next. Surprisingly Peer demonstrates a tremendous amount of resiliency in overcoming his social and economic standing. Hope comes in the form of contact with his birth father, a man of distinguished military rank and wealth, who agrees to routinely provide sufficient funds to ensure Peer's social advancement. Yet with his father's untimely death, all financial ties are cut off to him by the estate's legal heirs. However, he commits himself to the goal of education on what meager funds are available to him through his own labors, and he even invites his impoverished half-sister, Louise, to live with him in his home which is little more than a hovel. Stricken by the sudden death of Louise, Peer comes to fundamentally question the nature of God--a reconciliation which will serve as a dominant theme throughout this novel and its sequel,`The New Temple.'

Science, it must be remembered, had a revolutionary impact on the way modern man of his day (late nineteenth century, I assume) came to see the relationship between himself and the world around him. Bojer characterizes Peer's view of Church doctrine as anachronistically hollow, echoing little more than platitudes of a somber and wrathful God. Equally so, Peer comes to question the zeal many of his age attached to the new religion of empirical science, something which he believed lacked a moral compass. Peer amasses great wealth through his feats of engineering genius in the Middle East, only eventually to return to Norway to meet the love of his life, Merle, whom he marries. Bad investments, though, force him into desperation and utter poverty, due to which he feels forced to send two of his children to live with his wife's aunt. Wracked by intense headaches and loss of much of his sight, with the sympathy and support of his devoted wife, he continues on his mission to find God.

For further information about Johan Bojer see: 'Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature' (Second Edition) pg. 99