“A beautiful tale, awash in the seasalt and sweat, bait and beer of the Havana coast. It tells a fundamental human truth: in a volatile world, from our first breath to our last wish, through triumphs and pitfalls both trivial and profound, what sustains us, ultimately, is hope.”
—The Guardian
“His masterpiece... a perfect piece of work.”
—Mario Vargas Llosa
“The old man embodies the ambition and courage it takes to live, and the need to redeem yourself again and again in your own eyes. When at last after ntold agonies you hook the prize, the achievement of a lifetime, the biggest damn fish out there…it falls apart. The story is about the fact that life ends—a hard-to-ignore truth that we spend our days ignoring. All you have is the moment, this moment.”
—Abraham Verghese
"Here is the master technician once more at the top of his form, doing superbly what he can do better than anyone else.”
—The New York Times
Description
The last novel Ernest Hemingway saw published, The Old Man and the Sea has proved itself to be one of the most enduring works of American fiction. It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.
Using the simple, powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificent twentieth-century classic. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novel confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.