"Hunger" by Knut Hamsun

If I had read this book without any context, I would have assumed it was a modernist work highly influenced by Kafka. It's hard to believe that it was originally published in 1890.

The narrative is a first-person account by an unnamed Norwegian writer. He wanders the streets of Christiana (current day Oslo), starving and trying to sell his work to the local newspaper. As he becomes more and more hungry, he loses his grasp on reality and is driven to do some perplexing and awful things. He is a masochist, playing survival as if it's a game of him versus the world.

For those who like linearity, this book should be discounted. The narrator and story move in circles until the very end. This can be frustrating, but there is something mesmerizing about the character that keeps you reading. 

A quote on the front deems the book, "one of the most disturbing novels in existence". You've been warned.

"Zofloya; or, The Moor: A Romance of the Fifteenth Century" - by Charlotte Dacre

"there is certainly a pleasure...in the infliction of prologned torment"

This novel is quite shocking. Even more so when you consider it was written in 1806. Use to the Jane Austenish Romantic novels of sensibility, whereby much is made over refusing to dance with someone, the heroine protagonist of "Zofloya" tortures, imprisons, murders and makes a deal with Satan. 

Poor Victoria. As a girl, her mother run off with a lover, leaving Victoria to shoulder her family's shame. Growing up she is improperly educated and neglected and becomes evil. She eventually marries, but then falls for her husband's brother, Henriquez. She poisons her husband and emprisons Henriquez' lover in a cave in the mountains. Henriquez refuses Victoria's love and eventually kills himself. Victoria, enraged, stabs Henriquez' lover multiple times before pushing her off a cliff.

Dacre is a little wordy and has a loose sense of grammar, but the incredibly depraved and malicious characters are compelling. A fascinating glimpse into another side of Romanticism.