War, loss, work, and relationships described in spare prose.
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) was an American novelist and short story writer known for concise prose. He began as a newspaper reporter, served as an ambulance driver in Italy during the First World War, and later lived in Paris. His collection In Our Time includes several stories about Nick Adams, a recurring character in his fiction. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
His stories often concern war, grief, work, and strained relationships. “Big Two-Hearted River” follows Nick Adams as he camps and fishes on his own. “Hills Like White Elephants” presents a couple discussing a decision without stating their disagreement directly. Hemingway often leaves the characters' feelings unexplained and conveys them through actions, physical details, and pauses in conversation.
From a quick encounter to a longer story.
While waiting for a train through Spain, a couple circles the life-changing decision neither can name directly.
A boy accompanies his doctor father across a dark lake to help a woman in labor, entering a night of pain, birth, and adult mystery.
As an autumn storm lashes Michigan, Nick Adams and Bill drink by the fire and talk around the breakup Nick cannot quite explain.
On a train to Paris, a proudly controlling mother carries a caged bird home while unknowingly passing the wreckage of her daughter’s love.
In a garden cluttered with bathtubs and boot jacks, a very busy God tries to keep order.
A failing advance man hides beneath a hotel sheet while alcohol and drugs turn his last escape into a grotesque pursuit he cannot outrun.
In a snowbound military hut, a major’s seemingly casual questions expose the dangerous private anxieties beneath his authority.
A wounded soldier and a nurse fall in love in wartime Milan, trying to make a future together before the front and the armistice pull them apart.
After the thaw, a peasant brings his wife’s body down from the mountains—and the villagers reveal the grotesque ritual he performed while waiting.
A writer reads a magazine’s promises of Romance while, far away, a famous bullfighter dies and is reduced to souvenir pictures.
Nick Adams walks away from a burned town into the Michigan wilderness, building a camp and fishing the river one careful act at a time.
In a rainy Italian hotel, an American wife goes after a stray cat and discovers how many other things she wants.
A road trip through Italy becomes a tour of suspicious officials, theatrical hospitality, and the small absurdities of a country under Fascism.
Two young friends race down an Alpine mountain, then linger over wine as marriage, school, and the end of freedom wait for them below.
A veteran boxer plans to lose the fight that will end his career—but keeping the money may demand one last act of courage.
In a Milan hospital after the fighting, wounded soldiers submit their bodies to machines while trying to imagine who they will be afterward.
War, revolution, bullfights, and executions flash past in hard-edged scenes where courage and brutality become nearly indistinguishable.
A young Harvard poet and his older bride cross the Atlantic determined to begin a perfect marriage, but Europe has other distractions.
A boy follows his jockey father through the racecourses of Italy and France, learning to love the horses, the crowds, and the man who rides them.
A wounded lieutenant keeps vigil against sleep, replaying memory, prayer, and imagined trout streams to hold his soul together after the war.
A young couple follows a drunken local guide out of Cortina for an illegal trout-fishing trip that keeps slipping further out of reach.
A veteran returns to his Oklahoma home after the war and finds that the town, his family, and the future they expect no longer fit him.
A boy’s holiday glow collapses when his father reveals that the girl he loves has chosen someone else.
After being thrown from a freight train, Nick Adams finds food and company beside a campfire—but the prizefighter waiting there is not safe.
A doctor’s claim to some driftwood is challenged by the lumberman who knows exactly where the logs came from.
On a moonlit fishing trip, Nick and Marjorie circle the quiet truth that their relationship has stopped being what it was.
Two strangers take over a small-town lunchroom and wait for a former prizefighter who knows exactly why they have come.
A young Hungarian revolutionary crosses postwar Italy with no money, a party credential, and an unwavering faith in the world revolution.
An aging bullfighter takes a cheap night fight in Madrid, determined to prove that the old skill and courage are still in him.
After the crucifixion, three Roman soldiers drink, joke, and circle the question of what it means to endure suffering.
In a small Michigan town, Liz Coates builds a private romance around the blacksmith whose return from a hunting trip changes everything.
