by Knut Hamsun

In this psychological novel, most of the story is a monologue in which Nagel, a visitor to a small coastal town in Norway, discusses his dreams and opinions at great length. Nagel loves more than anything to talk, and he manages to confuse and fascinate the townspeople with his eccentric ideas and shifting perception of reality. Hamsun employs the stream-of-consciousness technique as a way not of getting at the truth but of obscuring it. The second of Hamsun’s novels, MYSTERIES was originally published in 1892.