Hunger by Knut Hamsun

The first novel by a great Norwegian writer, Hamsun really knows what human destitution and suffering are all about. The story follows an unidentified man looking for food on the streets of Christiania, Denmark. That's about it. The plot, if we can even call it that, concerns his pursuits, his trials and struggles to sustain himself as he roams about searching for something to eat, much like an animal, from one part of the city to the next. The most important identifying markers about our protagonist are completely missing: his name, his origin, his history: parents/family, life before his present predicament etc. Unlike the typical sans-abri: begging for spare change, eating out of dumpsters, waiting in line at the local shelter for a loaf of bread, this character is resourceful and obsessively preoccupied with grandiose notions of pride and dignity. Even though his situation gets progressively worse as the story develops, our hero (subject to interpretation) never loses hope. Rather than being concerned about his physical degradation, the protagonist rants about his eternal soul, his moral salvation, Christ the saviour and such. He is convinced that, like Jesus, he too is meant for some higher purpose in life. The story takes on a more sinister turn when his starvation seems to be self-induced: a voluntary fast, a sacrifice for a greater good.
Episodes pile on top of episodes: he falls in love with a girl he meets randomly while walking down a street, he pawns off nearly all his belongings, has several run-ins with the law, begins to lose his mind, tries to rape the girl he met. In one particularly poignant scene, the protagonist take a bite out of his finger, not out of desperation but just to feel what it would be like.
The brilliance of the book lies in the simple fact that it is not about what it appears to be. It doesn't concern hunger at all, or rather, not the kind one would be led to believe. Hamsun presents the complexity of modern satiation for a hero who seeks to transcend his baser urges. It is a man's struggle to reclaim his masculinity, it is a human's struggle to remain moral in a world which demands nothing short of immorality. Highly recommended for a quiet summer read: depressing, morbid and ridiculously funny.