"Hunger" has been hailed as the literary opening of the 20th century and an outstanding example of modern, psychology-driven literature. "Hunger" portrays the irrationality of the human mind in an intriguing and sometimes humorous manner. The novel is loosely based on the author's own impoverished life before his breakthrough in 1890. Set in late 19th-century Kristiania (now Oslo), "Hunger" recounts the adventures of a starving young man whose sense of reality is giving way to a delusionary existence on the darker side of a modern metropolis.