For Whom the Bell Tolls

Hemingway traveled to Spain in 1937 to cover the civil war there for an American newspaper. Three years later he finished For Whom the Bell Tolls—the greatest novel to emerge from the skirmishes. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades fighting for an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordos last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving, and wise. If a writer's job is to reveal reality, Hemingway wrote his editor after finishing the manuscript, no one ever so completely performed it.