First edition, first printing, of Hemingway's collection of 14 stories in which, as noted by the blurb, "the softening feminine influence is almost wholly absent - either through training, discipline, death, or situation". In his inability to create a straightforward a gay romance, Hemingway instead allows his characters to become genderqueer, genderfluid, to play with roles and switch sides. This centerpiece scene, of Catherine as the architect and executor, threads queerness through her character as much as it does David’s. She is as queer in this scene as when, later in the novel, she sleeps with Marita, another female character.

This influential 14-story collection includes some of the Nobel laureate’s most notable short fiction, including “Hills Like White Elephants” and “Fifty Grand,” which a Cosmopolitan editor praised as “one of the best short stories that ever came to my hands.” Read by an Earphones Award–winning narrator. The Undefeated, In Another Country, Hills Like White Elephants, The Killers, Che Ti Dice La Patria?, Fifty Grand, A Simple Enquiry, Ten Indians, A Canary for One, An Alpine Idyll, A Pursuit Race, Today is Friday, Banal Story, Now I Lay Me. Themes and subject matter range from bullfighting, boxing, and prizefighting to divorce, infidelity, and death. Critics at the time praised Hemingway’s concise language and powerful prose. Cheerfully this was not the case and Ernest existed, sometimes belligerently one suspects, in a time when the only required eau de toilette pour homme was testosterone. The stories in this book reflect this, with each character reduced to the raw brutal essence of what it means to be a man; in the bullring, at the end of a gun, in war at the wheel of a car or in the arms of a woman. I get that there was lots of symbolism and big themes in these little nuggets, but for me, there are more enjoyable ways to consider them. The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads . She put the felt pads and the beer glass on the table and looked at the man and the girl . The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry .Hemingway is known for his objective and terse prose, significantly succinct and precise. This is no better exemplified from the following passage from the story 'A Simple Enquiry':

The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.And then after 70 minutes of discussion I ask them certain trigger questions and I always see that never ending effect of eyes widening and constant eyelashes fluttering when they finally understand and then they always say: oh my God, really?! very few authors can do this. it’s pretty badass to observe what he’s done to you when weeks later you’re still contemplating the intention of one of his stories. Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899. His father was a doctor and he was the second of six children. Their home was at Oak Park, a Chicago suburb. You are changing,” she said. “Oh you are. You are. Yes you are and you’re my girl Catherine. Will you change and be my girl and let me take you?”

In 1917, Hemingway joined the Kansas City Star as a cub reporter. The following year, he volunteered as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, where he was badly wounded but decorated for his services. He returned to America in 1919, and married in 1921. In 1922, he reported on the Greco-Turkish war before resigning from journalism to devote himself to fiction. He settled in Paris where he renewed his earlier friendships with such fellow-American expatriates as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Their encouragement and criticism were to play a valuable part in the formation of his style. A crowd of young men, some in jerseys and some in their shirt-sleeves, got out. I could see their hands and newly washed, wavy hair in the light from the door. The policeman standing by the door looked at me and smiled. They came in. As they went in, under the light I saw white hands, wavy hair, white faces, grimacing, gesturing, talking. With them was Brett. She looked very lovely and she was very much with them. The Old Man and The Sea is one of my favourite books ever written, yet ashamedly I haven't explored much else of Hemingway other than The Sun Also Rises (which is also an incredible read). Also if his stories are anything to go by, he's too much of a chauvinist for me to like. His men are too masculine, too worldly, too sure of themselves. This is not what a man is. This is sexist.After his divorce of 1927 from Hadley Richardson, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer. At the Spanish civil war, he acted as a journalist; afterward, they divorced, and he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, and Cuba during the 1930s and 1940s. Economical and understated style of Hemingway strongly influenced 20th-century fiction, whereas his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s. He published seven novels, six short story collections and two nonfiction works. Survivors published posthumously three novels, four collections of short stories, and three nonfiction works. People consider many of these classics.