A Farewell to Arms

A Farewell to Arms is a novel written by Ernest Hemingway and first published in 1929.

The novel, set during World War I, follows the story of Frederic Henry. He is an American ambulance driver serving with the Italian army. There, he falls in love with a British nurse named Catherine Barkley.

Amid the horrors of war, love becomes both a refuge and an escape, but it also puts their relationship to the test. With a spare and restrained style, Hemingway presents a story about love in times of war and the struggle against despair.

The novel is semi-autobiographical: Hemingway volunteered as an ambulance driver with the American Red Cross in Italy, where he was wounded and later drew on that experience for the book.

"In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels."