Death In The Afternoon

Hemingway's passion for Spain and for the bullfight is renowned.

In Death in the Afternoon he shares the sights, the sounds, the excitement and, above all, the knowledge which fuelled his passion for the 'the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal, and a piece of scarlet serge draped on a stick. '

First published in 1932, it remains a classic for its historical account of the Corrida, for the stories of the great matadors, their banderilleros and picadors - the men who live every day with death -and for stories of the bulls whose bravery is the primal root of the bullfight. Death in the Afternoon also contains some of the finest short stories Hemingway ever wrote, inspired by the intense life as well as the inevitable death of those hot, violent afternoons.

About the Author

Ernest Hemingway was born in Chicago in 1899, the second of six children. In 1917, he joined the Kansas City Star as a cub reporter. The following year, he volunteered as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, where he was badly wounded but decorated for his services. He returned to America in 1919, and married in 1921. In 1922, he reported on the Greco-Turkish war before resigning from journalism to devote himself to fiction. He settled in Paris, associating with other expatriates like Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. He was passionately involved with bullfighting, big-game hunting and deep-sea fishing. Recognition of his position in contemporary literature came in 1954 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He died in 1961.