The Sun Also Rises

By Ernest Hemingway

Paperback  

Published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises was hailed by The New York Times as “a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic prose that puts more literary English to shame”. With this bold debut novel, Hemingway established his reputation as the chronicler of the “lost generation” of American expatriates living in Paris in the 1920s.

At the heart of the action are the narrator Jake Barnes, whose tough front belies a profound vulnerability, and Lady Brett Ashley, who embodies the sexually liberated new woman of the period. In pursuit of an impossible relationship with her, Jake seeks solace in male camaraderie and in the restorative power of nature. From the cosmopolitan French capital, imbued with the transgressive spirit of the jazz age, the narrative takes us to the festival of San Fermín in Pamplona in rural Spain, idealised as yet uncorrupted by modernity.