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The Old Man and the Sea
  • Published: 5 March 1999
  • ISBN: 9780099273967
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 112
  • RRP: $26.00

The Old Man and the Sea

Formats & editions
Paperback
20 Oct 2026
Paperback
5 Mar 1999
Paperback
4 Jan 1994
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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
  • Published: 5 March 1999
  • ISBN: 9780099273967
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 112
  • RRP: $26.00
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About the author

Ernest Hemingway

ERNEST HEMINGWAY was raised in Oak Park, Illinois, the child of a physician and a musician. After high school, he became a journalist with The Kansas City Star, before enlisting to be an ambulance driver in World War I. He returned home after a serious injury in 1918, but his military experience informed his fiction, especially A Farewell to Arms. He worked as a war correspondent for The Toronto Star during his first marriage, and over the next three marriages he would live in Paris, London, Key West, and Cuba. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two nonfiction titles. On safari in Africa in 1952 he survived two plane crashes, though his obituaries ran prematurely. He lived on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Two trunks of his early work from Paris reappeared in 1957, and inspired him to write his memoir A Moveable Feast. He eventually committed suicide in Idaho in 1961.
portrait photo of Ernest Hemingway

Also by Ernest Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls
A Moveable Feast
Fiesta
A Farewell to Arms: The Special Edition
Islands in the Stream
The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War
The Annotated Sun Also Rises
See all

Praise for The Old Man and the Sea

It is unsurpassed in Hemingway's oeuvre. Every word tells and there is not a word too many

Anthony Burgess

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

Guardian

Hemingway’s masterpiece is one of the first serious books I remember reading… I find its themes deeply moving… it’s short, direct, and full of emotional depth

Michael Morpurgo

Stripped back and elemental, Hemingway’s parable remains one of the purest expressions of his inimitable style

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