A farewell to arms

About the book

Frederic Henry, an American serving with an Italian ambulance unit during the First World War, meets the English nurse Catherine Barkley. Their developing relationship gives personal urgency to a life otherwise organised around military movement, injury, waiting, and routine. Hemingway keeps large declarations under pressure from concrete experiences: roads, hospital rooms, weather, meals, and conversations whose restraint can conceal intense feeling. As the war's demands become harder to reconcile with private attachment, Frederic must reconsider the obligations and assurances around him. The novel's emotional force depends on the effort to create a shared life without possessing control over its circumstances. Its spare surface invites attention to what the characters avoid saying, as well as to the moments when simple language carries more than an explanation could.

• Love and war
• Disillusionment
• Vulnerability

Why read it

For restrained prose that allows ordinary physical details and guarded conversations to carry the pressures of war and intimacy.

English text