Ernest hemingway biography book by yuzzi


The 10 Best Ernest Hemingway Books Everyone Should Read

1

Best Overall

Scribner The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

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Published in , Hemingway’s first novel is now widely regarded as his best. Hemingway traveled to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona with the intention of producing a non-fiction book about bullfighting. Instead, the trips he made between and inspired his first major novel.

Inspired by Hemingway’s band of expatriate friends, the characters grapple with the disillusionment felt by so many members of the “lost generation” against the hot-blooded backdrop of bullfighting.

2

A Tragic Tale

Scribner A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

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In , Hemingway told The Paris Review that he “rewrote the ending to [A] Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times.” While he left some of the story’s grimmest potential endings on the cutting-room floor, the book still represents Hemingway’s starkest portrayal of World War I — and the disillusionment he and other members of his generation felt in its wake.

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3

Best Short Stories

Scribner The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

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Why settle for one short story collection when you can have them all? Along with famous short stories such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," this definitive collection also includes a number of previously unpublished Hemingway pieces.

4

Most Experimental

Scribner To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

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Reading recent reviews of To Have and Have Not, you’ll find plenty of warnings for folks unlikely to care for the novel — fans of the book’s film adaptations and people seeking happy endings, for starters — but it’s a must-read for any seasoned Hemingway fan.

The fragmented narrative, which follows a man forced into running contraband between Cuba and Key West to save his family from poverty, combines high adventure with subtle emotional depth and occasional humor.

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5

Best War Novel

Scribner For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

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Inspired by Hemingway’s time spent covering the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance, For Whom the Bell Tolls follows a young American attached to an antifascist guerilla unit. The book stands out for its detailed, realistic depiction of 20th-century warfare and is often ranked among the best examples of modern war literature.

6

Award-Winning

Scribner The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

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This novella is a classic choice for required reading in high school literature classes for a reason: Hemingway won a Pulitzer and a Nobel for the work. The Old Man and the Sea centers on an aging fisherman who faces an unlucky streak in the waters he knows so intimately. His expertise as a fisherman — and his mettle and determination—are put to the test when he encounters a merlin longer than his boat.

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7

Most Surprising

Scribner The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway

The Garden of Eden marks Hemingway’s second and final posthumously published book. The manuscript, which he began in , remained unfinished upon his death in and wasn’t published until While some critics say Hemingway’s editor failed to capture the book Hemingway intended to write, the novel stands out for its surprisingly contemporary themes of androgyny and sexual fluidity.

8

Best Memoir

Scribner A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

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While all of Ernest Hemingway’s books borrow liberally from his real-life experiences, this posthumously published memoir directly recounts the author’s time in Paris as a young man. Hemingway based the contents of the book — which features his interactions with figures such as Alice B. Toklas, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein — on notebooks he recovered and transcribed in the s.

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9

Best Non-fiction

Audible Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway

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In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway’s love of bullfighting is a vehicle to explore cowardice, bravery, and the search for meaning. He presents the tradition as more than a sport, introducing readers to “the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal, and a piece of scarlet serge draped on a stick."

While it might not be the most well-known Ernest Hemingway book, it’s almost certainly the most famous and respected book about the art of bullfighting.

10

Behind the Scenes

Scribner By-Line by Ernest Hemingway

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Today Hemingway is most famous for his works of fiction. But his novels and short stories borrowed heavily from his own experiences as a sportsman, world traveler, and war correspondent. Spanning the years to , this collection showcases Hemingway's journalistic work for newspapers and magazines around the world and offers a glimpse into the world behind his fiction.

Rachel Feltman

Rachel is a freelance writer, editor and content strategist and host of the hit podcast The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. Her first book, "Been There, Done That: A Rousing History of Sex" came out in May She loves reading about weird history, sharing weird science facts and writing weird ghost stories.

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