A Farewell to Arms

Description

In 1918 Ernest Hemingway went to war, to the 'war to end all wars'. He volunteered for ambulance service in Italy, was wounded and twice decorated. Out of his experience came A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway's description of war is unforgettable. He recreates the fear, the comradeship, the courage of his young American volunteer, and the men and women he meets in Italy, with total conviction. But A Farewell to Arms is not only a novel of war. In it Hemingway has also created a love story of immense drama and uncompromising passion.

Ernest Hemingway was born in Chicago in 1899, the second of six children. In 1917, he joined the Kansas City Star as a cub reporter. The following year, he volunteered as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, where he was badly wounded but decorated for his services. He returned to America in 1919, and married in 1921. In 1922, he reported on the Greco-Turkish war before resigning from journalism to devote himself to fiction. He settled in Paris, associating with other expatriates like Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. He was passionately involved with bullfighting, big-game hunting and deep-sea fishing. Recognition of his position in contemporary literature came in 1954 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He died in 1961.

Flawless... such mastery of narrative, imagery and feeling, the prerequisites for great prose * Guardian * It seems such simple and straightforward language, but it isn't. The first chapter of A Farewell to Arms is only two and a bit pages but there is almost every variety of sentence structure. It is incredibly artful writing, and part of the art is disguising that it is artful * Guardian * There is something so complete in Mr. Hemingway's achievement in A Farewell to Arms that one is left speculating as to whether another novel will follow in this manner, and whether it does not complete both a period and a phase...crisply natural and convincing * Guardian, 1929 * A novel of great power * Times Literary Supplement * Essential Hemingway...a gripping account of the life of an American volunteer in the Italian army and a poignant love story * Daily Express *