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  • Published: 9 May 1997
  • ISBN: 9780099910107
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

A Farewell to Arms




One of the greatest war novels ever witten by one of the twentieth century's greatest novelists.

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 experiences came his early masterpiece, A Farewell to Arms.

In an unforgettable depiction of war, Hemingway recreates the fear, the comradeship, the courage of his young American volunteers and the men and women he encounters along the way with conviction and brutal honesty. A love story of immense drama and uncompromising passion, A Farewell to Arms offers a unique and unflinching view of the world and people, by the winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.

  • Published: 9 May 1997
  • ISBN: 9780099910107
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

About the author

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899. His father was a doctor and he was the second of six children. Their home was at Oak Park, a Chicago suburb.

In 1917, Hemingway 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 where he renewed his earlier friendships with such fellow-American expatriates as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Their encouragement and criticism were to play a valuable part in the formation of his style.

Hemingway's first two published works were Three Stories and Ten Poems and In Our Time but it was the satirical novel, The Torrents of Spring, that established his name more widely. His international reputation was firmly secured by his next three books; Fiesta, Men Without Women and A Farewell to Arms.

He was passionately involved with bullfighting, big-game hunting and deep-sea fishing and his writing reflected this. He visited Spain during the Civil War and described his experiences in the bestseller, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

His direct and deceptively simple style of writing spawned generations of imitators but no equals. 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.

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Praise for A Farewell to Arms

Flawless... such mastery of narrative, imagery and feeling, the prerequisites for great prose

Edna O'Brien, 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

John Harvey, 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

Hard, almost metallic, glittering, blinding by the reflections of its hard surface, utterly free of sentimentality- a strange and original book, it will convince you of its honesty and veracity

Arnold Bennett

A most beautiful, moving and humane book

Vita Sackville-West

A novel of great power.

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