The Women at the Pump

Joining previous Hamsun novels published by Sun and Moon Press (Victoria and Wayfarers), The Women at the Pump, originally published in Norway in 1920, reveals the narrative power of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist. The women at the pump in Hamsun's small Norwegian coastal town are seldom short of something to talk about: scandals of adultery and illegitimate children, class tensions and hostility, religious disputes, and a mail robbery involving some of the town's most significant figures. All serve as a backdrop to the activities of Oliver Andersen and his large family he and his wife contrive to raise despite the growing suspicions that a mysterious accident at sea deprived him of more than a leg.