The definitive edition of the classic novel of love during wartime,
featuring all of the alternate endings: "Fascinating...serves as an
artifact of a bygone craft, with handwritten notes and long passages
crossed out, giving readers a sense of an author's process" (The New
York Times).
Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the
best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is
the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian
front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the
looming horrors of the battlefield--weary, demoralized men marching in
the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle
between loyalty and desertion--this gripping, semiautobiographical work
captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its
inexorable sweep.
Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell
to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right. This edition collects
all of the alternative endings together for the first time, along with
early drafts of other essential passages, offering new insight into
Hemingway's craft and creative process and the evolution of one of the
greatest novels of the twentieth century. Featuring Hemingway's own 1948
introduction to an illustrated reissue of the novel, a personal foreword
by the author's son Patrick Hemingway, and a new introduction by the
author's grandson Seán Hemingway, this edition of A Farewell to Arms
is truly a celebration.
