Hemingway’s beloved novel of doomed love during wartime, now available for the first time from Penguin Classics, with a new foreword by Abraham Verghese, the multimillion-copy bestselling author of The Covenant of Water and Cutting for Stone
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper
A Farewell to Arms is one of Ernest Hemingway’s most popular books, a masterpiece that is not only among the greatest novels to come out of World War I but also one of the most profoundly moving in the American canon. Based on Hemingway’s own experience volunteering with the Red Cross in Italy during World War I, and written when he was only thirty, it tells the story of Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver, and Catherine Barkley, an English nurse. For Frederic, Catherine’s kindness and beauty shore him up against the carnage of battle; for Catherine, Frederic’s strength and devotion are a lifeboat in the sea of grief over her first love. Through injury, surgery, and the psychic fallout of war, they maintain an overwhelming desire to be together, even as forces conspire to keep them apart. Hemingway captures the intensity of both love and war with the taut immediacy and spare, understated eloquence that are his hallmarks, reminding us why this novel—his first bestseller—endures as a favorite, and why the Nobel laureate ranks among our most treasured writers.
“I believe A Farewell to Arms is Hemingway’s finest novel. It is also the quintessential war novel. . . . When I first read A Farewell to Arms, it took only a few chapters for me to know I was reading something very different. . . . As a budding writer, I found much to admire in the way Hemingway drew on his experience with trauma, death, and chaotic medical intervention. . . . I have read A Farewell to Arms many times over the last fifty years, and I love how well it holds up with each reading.” —Abraham Verghese, from the Foreword
“A moving and beautiful book.” —The New York Times
“A towering ornament of American literature.” —The Washington Times
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) was born in Illinois and began his career as a reporter before enlisting as an ambulance driver at the Italian front in World War I. Hemingway and his first (of four) wives lived in Paris in the 1920s, as part of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, before moving to Key West, Florida, and later to Cuba. Known first for short stories, he sealed his literary reputation with his novels, including The Sun Also Rises,A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea.View titles by Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway’s beloved novel of doomed love during wartime, now available for the first time from Penguin Classics, with a new foreword by Abraham Verghese, the multimillion-copy bestselling author of The Covenant of Water and Cutting for Stone
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper
A Farewell to Arms is one of Ernest Hemingway’s most popular books, a masterpiece that is not only among the greatest novels to come out of World War I but also one of the most profoundly moving in the American canon. Based on Hemingway’s own experience volunteering with the Red Cross in Italy during World War I, and written when he was only thirty, it tells the story of Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver, and Catherine Barkley, an English nurse. For Frederic, Catherine’s kindness and beauty shore him up against the carnage of battle; for Catherine, Frederic’s strength and devotion are a lifeboat in the sea of grief over her first love. Through injury, surgery, and the psychic fallout of war, they maintain an overwhelming desire to be together, even as forces conspire to keep them apart. Hemingway captures the intensity of both love and war with the taut immediacy and spare, understated eloquence that are his hallmarks, reminding us why this novel—his first bestseller—endures as a favorite, and why the Nobel laureate ranks among our most treasured writers.
Praise
“I believe A Farewell to Arms is Hemingway’s finest novel. It is also the quintessential war novel. . . . When I first read A Farewell to Arms, it took only a few chapters for me to know I was reading something very different. . . . As a budding writer, I found much to admire in the way Hemingway drew on his experience with trauma, death, and chaotic medical intervention. . . . I have read A Farewell to Arms many times over the last fifty years, and I love how well it holds up with each reading.” —Abraham Verghese, from the Foreword
“A moving and beautiful book.” —The New York Times
“A towering ornament of American literature.” —The Washington Times
Author
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) was born in Illinois and began his career as a reporter before enlisting as an ambulance driver at the Italian front in World War I. Hemingway and his first (of four) wives lived in Paris in the 1920s, as part of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, before moving to Key West, Florida, and later to Cuba. Known first for short stories, he sealed his literary reputation with his novels, including The Sun Also Rises,A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea.View titles by Ernest Hemingway
