The Old Man And The Sea

By (author) Ernest Hemingway; By (author) Hemingway, Ernest
Short description/annotation
Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway''s magnificent fable is the tale of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. This story of heroic endeavour won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. It stands as a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man''s challenge to the elements.
Description

The book that won Ernest Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature

''It''s silly not to hope. It''s a sin he thought''

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway''s magnificent fable is the tale of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. This story of heroic endeavour won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. It stands as a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man''s challenge to the elements.

''The best story Hemingway has written. No page of this beautiful master-work could have been done better or differently'' Sunday Times

''The writing is as taut, and at the same time as lithe and cunningly played out, as the line on which the old man plays the fish'' Guardian

Review quote
It is unsurpassed in Hemingway''s oeuvre. Every word tells and there is not a word too many
Review quote
A quite wonderful example of narrative art. The writing is as taut, and at the same time as lithe and cunningly played out, as the line on which the old man plays the fish
Biographical note
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.
Promotional headline
''The best story Hemingway has written. No page of this beautiful master-work could have been done better or differently'' Sunday Times