A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway is a timeless novel that explores the harrowing realities of love, war, and loss. Set during World War I, Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver in the Italian army, faces the brutalities of war. Amid the chaos, he develops a complex relationship with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. Hemingway’s unflinching prose explores the emotional toll of war, the power of human connection, and the inevitable tragedy that shapes their lives. A defining work of 20th-century literature, this novel remains a powerful meditation on the human condition.

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

• Provides a rich exploration of love, loss, and emotional resilience during wartime.
• Captures both the physical horrors and the psychological toll on soldiers and civilians alike.
• Delves into the psychological effects of war, exploring themes of trauma, disillusionment, and coping mechanisms.
• A key work in American literature, offering insight into the post-WWI period.
• Explores devotion, sacrifice, and the fleeting nature of happiness in an uncertain world.

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.