Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3804 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

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

About the Author
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.

Customer Reviews

The Old Man and the Sea
This is probably the best book ever crafted of this length. It is short, but extremely elegant. Hemingway's terse style truly shines through in this book and the imagery is outstanding. The story keeps you as hooked as the fish on the old man's line and you feel the frustrations and triumphs as keenly as he does. Simply beautiful and one of the best examples of why Hemingway is loved so. Well worth a go.

Hemingway Waning, but Still Relevant
This is a simple tale, but not one told by anidiot. I first read it when I was 12-years-old and can't say it is anovel I want to return to, just as I don't particularly want to return to Steinbeck's The Red Pony. But I would maintain that it is a wonderful introduction to Hemingway for a young reader.

I believe that papa had his best period of production in the twenties and thirties, (Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms). He also wrote his better short stories during that time (The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber), but one can't dismiss this work entirely.

The Old Man and the Sea reminds me of a Neruda poem, simple on the surface, yet reflecting larger themes. I'm sure you were all taught about microcosm vs. macrocosm in English class, right? Well this is an example of the former, similar in some respects to Camus and Sartre and other existentialists.

Santiago's struggle is similar to Camus' depiction of Sysiphus in his essay, The Myth of Sysiphus. The old fisherman's struggle with his marlin is similar to Sysiphus' eternally rolling that stone uphill in Hades. It's something he is compelled to do by his very fibre and is thus comepletely resigned to. Yet choice is also involved, and thus we have an existentialist novel, produced from the simplest of stories. Ne-c'est-pas?

We tend to dismiss this tale as a simplistic allegory, but should remember that this came out at the time when Sartre and Camus were producing their most important work. I don't think Hemingway was out-of-touch with the French literary movement of which he had always tried to remain a part.

A classic simply told story.
The basic story is simple. An old man sets out to catch a Marlin, it's just him, the sea and the fish.You couldn't make a full length feature film out of the story, but Hemingway tells it so well, you end up with sympathy for the man and the fish.There seems to be a base principle in writing that you must have a good story and then write it well.In this book Hemingway succedes.