NIGHT ROAMERS and Other Stories

Some previously unpublished Hamsun fragments and sketches are translated here, quite nicely by Tiina Nunnally, though with only a few being of interest to the non-Hamsun-scholar. The best of these is the title piece, a pencil sketch of the shadows and opportunities of late night--as men leave taverns, find whores, and ultimately make their way to cafes (""Dented hats, turned-up coat collars, badly pressed waistcoat points and cuffs, and dirty fists are visible everywhere; and the waitresses bustle around serving coffee and dumplings and collecting payment in handsful of change"") and then home. Hamsun's remarkable visualness here, his broad black Expressionist strokes, move the prose along memorably. Much else is sentimental propaganda (""Sin"") or mere whimsy (""Bad Days""), some of it so slight that Hamsun himself disavowed it.