For whom the bell tolls

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Ernest Hemingway: For whom the bell tolls (1955, Penguin)

431 pages

English language

Published Jan. 6, 1955 by Penguin.

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5 stars (3 reviews)

High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, has been sent to handle the dynamiting. There, in the mountains, he finds the dangers and the intense comradeship of war. And there he discovers Maria, a young woman who has escaped from Franco's rebels.

61 editions

A masterpiece

5 stars

As a Hemingway die-hard fun, I must say this is for me one his most successful works, alongside Fiesta and a Farewell to Arms. The author perfectly conveys the trauma, the spiritual mangling, the contradictions, the inebitable loss which a civil war, but also describes the lives of those who volunteered to sacrifice their life for the sake of an idea. The driving rhythm of his concise prose makes this book an engaging reading

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4 stars