Hemingway in Italy (Armchair Traveller)

Ernest Hemingway is most often associated with Spain, Cuba, and Florida, but Italy was equally important in his life and work. This book, the first on the subject, explores Hemingway s visits throughout his life to such places as Sicily, Genoa, Rapallo, Cortina, and Venice. Richard Owen describes how Hemingway first visited Italy during World War I, an experience that set the scene for A Farewell to Arms. The writer then returned after World War II, where he would find inspiration for Across the River and into the Trees. When Men without Women was published, some reviewers declared Hemingway to be at heart a reporter preoccupied with bullfighters, soldiers, prostitutes, and hard drinkers, but their claims failed to note that he also wrote sensitively and passionately about love and loss against an Italian backdrop. Owen highlights the significance of Italy in the writer s life. On the night he shot himself in July 1961, for example, Hemingway sang a song he had once learned in Cortina