The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

by Ernest Hemingway

Paperback

About the author

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle, and outspoken and blunt public image. Most of Hemingway's works were published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works. His writings have become classics of American literature; he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, while three of his novels, four short-story collections and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.

Reviews

[Cuy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book three times. On my third try I didn't stop until I finished it; I'm glad I did.

The story that names this book is the weakest out of the rest, I didn't care much for it. I cringed with the "I want to destroy you in bed" part of the dialogue. What this first story did well was setting up the rest of the themes we can find in the following stories: regret, violence, boredom, trauma, love, death, life, and acceptance.

The snippets of a narrative thread before each story really bring the whole book together and elevate its themes. I feel it is even better than the stories that follow them. They are the perfect bait for us trouts looking for something in Hemingway's writing.

I found it hard not to relate to Nick. I'm not him though. I can't be.

These stories are like the bare bones of a bear drying on a rock in the summer heat.

[Matthew Bellamy · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

TSOK is A masterclass in Hemingway’s economy of writing, distilling mortality, regret and wasted potential into a vivid, emotionally intense story. Harry’s fragmented memories transport us through the colour and romance of a life, even as his present reveals a bitter, diminished man who blames others for his own failings. The dreamer transcends; the man falls short. Hemingway’s prose remains beautiful, though Helen’s underdeveloped character feels another casualty of his preoccupation with his male protagonist.


The remainder of the collection failed to reach the same heights, and the italicised flashbacks at the start of each piece just hurt my eyes and pissed me off.

[Lea Luna · Rating 1 out of 5]

i read that book at the wrong time i guess. i like hemingway dont get me wrong, it was just not my kind of book. its autobiographical, i liked the authenticity of it.
„….revealing tenderness of feeling beneath descriptions of brutality“ is what the guardian wrote about the book, i couldnt agree more, most of the short stories left me anxious, which indicates great writing, but was not what i needed rn.

[Coco Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

all these stories are strangely dark and brutal but so poignant they stick with you. Could only read one at a time even though most are like 3 pages.