The Novel Index

Where to start with Ernest Hemingway

American novelist, 1899–1961. Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953.

Best Ernest Hemingway book to start with: The Old Man and the Sea (1952), on 5 of the 17 lists it could have made.

Start with The Old Man and the Sea, a novella about an old fisherman and a giant fish that you can finish in one sitting. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and the lists split their votes between it and The Sun Also Rises. The prose is plain and the story is simple, which is why it works so well as a first Hemingway.

Read The Sun Also Rises next. It follows a group of friends drinking and drifting round Paris and Spain in the 1920s. Not much happens at first, but stay with it and you’ll see why it’s on so many lists.

A Farewell to Arms follows an American ambulance driver and a nurse in Italy during the First World War. It’s the most emotional of the four. Save For Whom the Bell Tolls for last. It is the longest, it’s set in the Spanish Civil War, and you’ll enjoy it more once you’ve got used to his style: short sentences, and a lot left unsaid.

Ernest Hemingway
Photo: Lloyd Arnold, public domain

Ernest Hemingway's books, ranked best first

The Old Man and the Sea comes first, on 5 of the 17 lists it could have made, followed by The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

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Ernest Hemingway's novels in order

The earliest on our lists is The Sun Also Rises (1926), and the most recent is The Old Man and the Sea (1952).

  1. 1926 The Sun Also Rises
  2. 1929 A Farewell to Arms
  3. 1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls
  4. 1952 The Old Man and the Sea

Novels on at least one of our 30 lists. Not a complete bibliography.

Lists used on this page