Hemingway Reading List

PBS Books has announced a book club conversation on Ernest Hemingway, in conjunction with the new PBS series, HEMINGWAY, premiering April 5-7 at 5pm.

We are encouraging people across the nation to read a book written by Hemingway in March, watch the HEMINGWAY documentary, and then join PBS Books for a virtual book club conversation with the filmmakers the following day, April 8 at 8pm ET.

Join the conversation at pbs.org/hemingwayevents, learn more at pbsbooks.org/hemingway, or follow on social with #HemingwayPBS. 

Registration here

This list compiles a selection of his canonical works, as well as biographies. Join the conversation at pbs.org/hemingwayevents, learn more at pbsbooks.org/hemingway, or follow on social #HemingwayPBS. 

BOOKS BY HEMINGWAY 

The Old Man and the Sea This minimalistic 1953 Pulitzer Prize winning novella describes the epic struggle between a sun-weary Cuban fisherman and a giant marlin as they hash it out in the deep waters of the Gulf. It is often cited as the chief catalyst for Hemingway winning the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. 

A Farewell to Arms This powerful treatise on love and war is considered to be one of the best American novels to have emerged from the aftermath of World War I. It tells the story of an American ambulance driver posted on the Italian frontlines and his intense passion for a dazzling English nurse. 

The Sun Also Rises This formerly banned book, often regarded as Hemingway’s first literary masterpiece is a quintessential portrait of the Lost Generation, detailing the wanderings of Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley through roaring Parisian nightlife and savage Spanish bullfights. 

For Whom the Bell Tolls This is Hemingway’s timeless tale of ardent love and antifascist guerrilla warfare in the jagged peaks of Spain tells of bravery, loyalty, love, and the death of an ideal at the final stand of El Sordo during the Spanish Civil War. 

A Moveable Feast Published in 1964, this book examines the glamorous happenings of creative minded gatherings in 1920’s Paris. The story comes face to face with Hemingway’s real-life interactions with writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. 

Green Hills of Africa This is Hemingway’s personal memoir of a picturesque safari across the Serengeti. It offers a rare look into the mindset of literature’s most famed big game hunter and his prescient qualms with the end of the untamed wilds at the hands of men. 

To Have and Have Not This book explores Hemingway’s sun-soaked encounters with working men, boaters, and black-market smugglers. It explores character Harry Morgan’s dramatic fall from grace at the onset of the Great Depression. 

In Our Time << Ernest Hemingway This collection of short stories and vignettes demonstrated Hemingway’s trademark knack for invoking a wide spectrum of emotions through sparse and simple prose. The book, published in 1925, was his literary debut. 

HEMINGWAY BIOGRAPHIES 

Ernest Hemingway: A Biography << Mary V. Dearborn This hefty tome is the most popular Hemingway biography to date and is also the first Hemingway biography written by a woman. 

Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir << A.E. Hotchner This unique account, penned by a Hemingway confidante, reports on a 14- year conversation that took place over trips from New York to Paris to Spain, to fishing in Cuba, hunting in Idaho, and running with the bulls in Pamplona.