Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899. His father was a physician, and he was the second of six children. Their home was in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb.
In 1917, Hemingway began working as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. The following year, he served as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, where he was seriously injured but decorated for his efforts. He moved back to America in 1919 and married in 1921. He covered the GrecoTurkish War in 1922 before leaving journalism to pursue a career in literature. He settled in Paris, where he rekindled old ties with fellow American expats such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Their praise and criticism would help shape his style.
Hemingway’s first two published works were Three Stories and Ten Poems and In Our Time, but
it was the satirical novel The Torrents of Spring that made him more famous. His three subsequent books, Fiesta, Men Without Women, and A Farewell to Arms, solidified his international fame.
He was passionate about bullfighting, big-game hunting, and deep-sea fishing, and his writing reflected it. He travelled to Spain during the Civil War and wrote about his experiences in the best-selling book For Whom the Bell Tolls.
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Men Without Women (1927) is Ernest Hemingway’s second short-stories collection and represents some of his most significant and compelling early writing. The 14 powerful stories here embody the crisp intensity and emotional depth associated with his writing. Among them, ‘The Killers’ presents a chilling encounter with two Chicago hitmen and their would-be victim; ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ captures a heart-wrenching conversation between a couple facing the prospect of abortion; and ‘In Another Country’ delves into the struggles of an Italian major dealing with war wounds and the devastating loss of his wife.
The collection introduces a memorable array of characters: Nick Adams, a recurring figure in Hemingway’s 1920s and 1930s stories, in ‘Ten Indians’; the famed bullfighter Manuel Garcia Maera in ‘Banal Story’; and the unyielding boxer Jack Brennan in ‘Fifty Grand’. Spanning themes of sportsmanship, infidelity, war, and the poignancy of human connections, these stories tackle life’s harshest realities with unflinching honesty and lasting impact. With its lean yet profound narrative style, Men Without Women solidified Hemingway’s status as the leading American short-story writer of his time.
