Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) was a defining figure of 20th-century American literature, renowned for his economical, iceberg-theory style. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, he served as an ambulance driver in World War I, an experience that deeply influenced his early novels, including A Farewell to Arms (1929), a stark love story set against the war's brutality. He was part of the expatriate “Lost Generation” in 1920s Paris, where he honed his craft under mentors like Gertrude Stein. Major works include The Sun Also Rises (1926), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Old Man and the Sea (1952), which also earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Hemingway’s legacy rests on his revolutionary prose style and his unflinching portrayal of human courage and vulnerability.