Release date is 2026-04-03

Vagabondage -- Zachäus -- Auf den Bänken von New-Foundland.

Peter Becker, Matthias Grammel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

"Abenteurer" by Knut Hamsun is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. It follows drifting laborers and outsiders in America, charting harsh prairie work, rail-side wandering, and fraught moral choices. Through figures like the narrator Nut, the cunning Jess, and rivals Huntley and Fred, Hamsun blends gritty realism with restless yearning. Expect vivid landscapes, hunger and hustle, fleeting luck, and the ache of unreturned love.

The opening of the collection centers on Vagabondage: Nut, exhausted by harvest toil on Orange Flat, slips away at night with Huntley and the wily Jess, tramps the prairie in hunger and cold, and fails to catch grain trains until a farm girl, Alice Rodgers, feeds them and secures work. After the job, Jess lures Nut to town, shadows a drunken bank manager, and cracks the bank while Nut keeps watch; claiming the safe is empty, Jess vanishes on a train, likely with cash, and Nut returns to the Rodgers farm. There he competes with Fred for Alice, briefly shines by saving her nephew’s life with quick first aid, yet watches Alice choose Fred; the pair elope, and Nut moves on west. The narrative then shifts to Zachäus, sketching the isolated Billybory farm in relentless heat and the comic-hostile feud between Polly, an ex-soldier cook proud of his songbook, and near-blind Zachäus, who covets his newspaper—setting the stage for new tensions. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: München: Albert Langen, 1914