The Sun Also Rises: Hemingway's Definitive Portrait of the Lost Generation

by Ernest Hemingway

Paris in the 1920s. The drinks are cold, the wounds are fresh, and nobody talks about the war. Jake Barnes and his hard-drinking, fast-talking circle of expatriates drift from the cafés of the Left Bank to the bullrings of Pamplona, chasing something they cannot name. Hemingway's debut novel captured a generation that had lost its gods, its innocence, and its faith in language itself — and decided to drink through the aftermath. Beneath the surface of every terse sentence, a bruise. Read it for the fiesta. Remember it for what cannot be fixed. The novel that made Hemingway famous is still the one that explains him best.

251 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 15, 2026

About the author

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899–1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Renowned for his economical, understated writing style, which profoundly influenced twentieth-century literature, he became one of the most prominent literary figures of his generation. His adventurous lifestyle and outspoken personality also contributed to his public image. Most of his works were published between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two works of nonfiction. His writings became classics of American literature, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Several additional novels, short-story collections and nonfiction works were published posthumously.

Hemingway grew up in Oak Park, Illinois. After graduating from high school, he worked for six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before volunteering for the American Red Cross. During the First World War, he served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences later inspired his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms.

In 1921, he married Hadley Richardson, his first wife, and moved with her to Paris. There, he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and became part of the expatriate literary and artistic community known as the Lost Generation, alongside influential modernist writers and artists. His debut novel, The Sun Also Rises, was published in 1926. He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer the following year.

Hemingway later travelled to Spain, where he worked as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War. The conflict provided the background for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. He married Martha Gellhorn, his third wife, in 1940, but their marriage ended after he met journalist Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during the Second World War. He married Welsh in 1946.

As a war correspondent during the Second World War, Hemingway accompanied Allied troops during the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained residences in Key West, Florida, during the 1930s and in Cuba during the 1940s and 1950s. In 1954, while travelling in Africa, he survived two plane crashes on successive days, sustaining serious injuries that contributed to years of physical pain and declining health.

In 1959, Hemingway purchased a house in Ketchum, Idaho. On July 2, 1961, at the age of 61, he died by suicide at his home.