A Farewell to Arms

Drawn from Ernest Hemingway’s own life, A Farewell to Arms is one of America’s greatest novels of love and war.

Set in Italy during World War I, A Farewell to Arms tells the story of Frederic Henry, a young American volunteer struck by a shell while driving an ambulance on the front lines, and British nurse Catherine Barkley, who is mourning the death of her fiancé in combat. As their tentative relationship deepens and their hopes rise, the escalating chaos and brutality of the war threaten to shatter their world. With shocking honesty, Hemingway evokes the years of destruction and disillusionment that produced the Lost Generation. 

A profound meditation on the fragility of human connection, A Farewell to Arms has captivated readers for more than a century with its blend of stark realism and raw emotional resonance.

Author Biography

Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961) grew up in Oak Park, IL, and upon graduating high school, enlisted as an ambulance driver with the American Red Cross in Italy, which informed the events of A Farewell to Arms. After World War I, he worked as a foreign correspondent based in Paris, forming part of the large expatriate writers’ community that included Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Madox Ford. After covering the Spanish Civil War and the tail end of World War II, Hemingway gave up journalism to concentrate on writing fiction. His spare, understated writing style made him one of the most influential authors of the twentieth century. He wrote many celebrated short stories and novels including The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Old Man and the Sea (1952). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.