Book Bearings
For Whom the Bell Tolls
- 480 pages · about 8 hours
- First published 1940
- 185 editions
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1 About this book
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.
- Historical fiction
- Classics
- Guerrilla warfare
- Military participation
- Foreign
- War & military
- War stories
- United States
2 What to expect
A novel of the Spanish Civil War, set in the mountains, where a young American volunteer joins a band of guerrillas to blow up a bridge. It is a war story and a love story, and much of it is waiting, talk and memory among the fighters. The dialogue imitates Spanish speech in a formal, old-fashioned English that takes getting used to, and the mood is tense and fatalistic.
Good for readers who want: a classic war novel, the Spanish Civil War, and love and duty under pressure.
3 About Ernest Hemingway
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Ernest Hemingway
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