As the modern industrialised world begins to encroach on a small, isolated coastal town in northern Norway the effect is devastating. For young Edevart, uprooted from his simple origins, it brings progressive alienation from the old traditions, for August, the lying, charming scoundrel, it means opportunities that will threaten the stability of an unspoiled community. With comic irony and a haunting power, Hamsun charts the slow disintegration of the old way of life in a magnificent novel that provides brilliant insights into human nature: the visiting skipper who is lured to his death by Ane Marie because, hurtfully, he did not makes advances to her, the old watch seller who is as ready to cheat himself as he is to swindle others, the poignant, painful love affair between Edevart and the barefoot Lovise Magrete. Written seven years after Hamsun received the Nobel Prize for literature, Wayfarers is a masterpiece by one of the great novelists of the twentieth century.