Wayfarers

As the modern industrialised world begins to encroach on a small, isolated coastal town in northern Norway the effect is devastating. For young Edevart, uprooted from his simple origins, it brings progressive alienation from the old traditions; for August, the lying, charming scoundrel, it means opportunities that will threaten the stability of an unspoiled community.

With comic irony and a haunting power, Hamsun charts the slow
disintegration of the old way of life in a magnificent novel that provides
brilliant insights into human nature: the visiting skipper who is lured to
his death by Ane Marie because, hurtfully, he did not makes advances
to her; the old watch seller who is as ready to cheat himself as he is to
swindle others; the poignant, painful love affair between Edevart and the
barefoot Lovise Magrete.
Written seven years after Hamsun received the Nobel Prize for literature,
Wayfarers is a masterpiece by one of the great novelists of the twentieth
century.