Ernest Hemingway First published 1929 (October issue of Scriber’s Magazine) This summer, I revisited Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms . Although the novel is set during WWI in Italy, in its essence, it is a love story rather than a war story. Not that it is a romance novel. Far from it! Hemingway uses no flowery language or long-winded descriptions. Instead, he uses his characteristic terse staccato sentences; an almost journalistic style of writing that, though at times feels cold, seems to reflect the cold vagaries of chance that determine the fortunes of man. Reading this novel, you get a clear feeling that the divide between life and death is indeed very subtle. The protagonist, Lieutenant Frederic Henry, is a young American who has joined the Italian ambulance corps as a volunteer. He is wounded by an exploding shell and is moved to an American hospital in Milan. While convalescing, he falls in love with a British nurse, Catherine Barkley, and after a brief love affair gets...
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