POR SENDEROS QUE LA MALEZA OCULTA

In 1949 — on the very day he received the verdict from the Norwegian court trying him for alleged treason — Hamsun, an eighty-nine-year-old man who had gone from being his country’s most beloved writer to its most hated, penned the final sentence of the manuscript that would become his last book, On Overgrown Paths: "St. John’s Day, 1948. Today the Supreme Court has handed down its verdict, and I bring my writing to a close." He had begun writing in May 1945, on the very day he and his wife were arrested. In this book — a blend of fiction and autobiography — Hamsun (initially interned in a nursing home, and later transferred to a psychiatric clinic in an attempt to attribute his past actions to insanity) describes his walks, his encounters with people, and his childhood memories, alongside reflections on his current predicament. Beyond serving as an indisputable testament to Hamsun’s immense narrative power, the work stands as a unique document offering insight into the arguments the writer presented during the trial he faced for his support of the Quisling regime in Nazi-occupied Norway from 1942 until the end of the Second World War. A fundamental component of the work is the defense plea he delivered before the court.