# Ylajali — Hunger character guide

> Ylajali in Hunger by Knut Hamsun.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0002-i

## Snapshot

A woman whose name the narrator invents before he ever speaks to her, then pursues through the streets of Christiania as if she could save him.

## Who they are

She first exists only as a name he gives her — Ylajali — a word he repeats like a charm, conjuring palaces of amethyst and ruby where she waits on a throne of yellow roses. When they finally meet, she is real and strange and slightly amused, and the gap between his fantasy and her actual presence becomes almost unbearable. She matters because she is the one thing his hunger cannot consume: a desire that outlives bread, and the measure of how far his mind has already traveled from the world.

## In the story

### [Hunger](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hunger_se/chapters/hunger)

Appears in the narrator's hallucination as Princess Ylajali.

### [III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hunger_se/chapters/iii)

The lady in black who stands outside the narrator's door for the fourth time; she speaks with him and reveals she lives with her deaf mother in St. Olav's Place.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hunger_se/characters/ylajali
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hunger_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hunger_se/characters