The Sun Also Rises

“You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”

Set in the aftermath of World War I, The Sun Also Rises follows a group of young expatriates as they drift through Paris and Spain in search of meaning, love, and escape. At the heart of the story are Jake Barnes, a journalist and war veteran grappling with physical and emotional wounds, and Lady Brett Ashley, an independent Englishwoman exploring the opportunities afforded by a new era of liberated women and sexual freedom. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the disillusioned Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain in an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love and vanishing illusions.

Published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises was Hemingways first major novel and the one that established his authorial voice and gave voice to the “Lost Generation”—those scarred by World War I and adrift in a modern world that felt morally and spiritually bankrupt.

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist renowned for his econimical, understated prose, adventurous lifestyle and outspoken public image. He began his career as a reporter and published a number of short stories before gaining fame with novels such as The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929), and his experiences during the Spanish Civil War informed the best-selling For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, and some of his seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works have become classics of American literature.