The Sun Also Rises

By Ernest Hemingway,

Book cover of The Sun Also Rises

Book description

Jake Barnes is a man whose war wound has made him unable to have sex—and the promiscuous divorcée Lady Brett Ashley. Jake is an expatriate American journalist living in Paris, while Brett is a twice-divorced Englishwoman with bobbed hair and numerous love affairs, and embodies the new sexual freedom of…

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Why read it?

9 authors picked The Sun Also Rises as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I came to Hemingway later in life than most. I was lucky enough not to have to read him in school, and for that reason, perhaps, I was able to approach his work without the baggage of tests, essays, and grades. If Travels with Charley is a look at a national road trip, this is an international one between France and Spain. Ostensibly, it’s about some friends traveling from Paris to Pamplona, but of course, there’s a lot more to it.

Sometimes, the right book finds you at the right time, and this book was that for me. I first…

I admire Hemingway’s measured empathy for the war-torn social outcast. This classic novel pictures a post-WWI environment where survivors have been physically and mentally maimed by their war experience; I like how Hemingway creates a vivid cast of characters struggling to find their way in a society that seems no better than before the conflict began.

Century Press is pleased to present a striking new edition of The Sun Also Riseslimited to 500 letterpress printed copies

  • Fully bound in vegetable-tanned, Oxblood-dyed goatskin leather from the Hudson Valley
  • Letterpress printed on premium 100% cotton 'Flurry' paper with a 1956 Heidelberg 'Windmill' platen press, typeset in Garamond
  • Smyth-sewn by hand for maximum durability
  • Italian, tight-weave, cotton ribbon bookmark
  • New introduction by Daniel Hannah, Professor of Literature at Lakehead University
  • Original gold-stamped artwork on front cover, back cover, and spine by Mac Pogue
  • Frontispiece illustration by Calvin Laituri

Check out this amazing letterpress version here.

I'm not sure the 1957 movie version of Hemingway's 1926 first novel, with terrific performances by Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, and Errol Flynn, is a great movie, but when I first saw it on my old black and white TV in the early sixties, I was so deeply affected. I had to immediately read the book.

Hemingway, was, of course, himself an expatriate American in Paris in the 1920s. What I love about the book is Hemingway's ability to capture the atmosphere of the time and place, as his Lost Generation characters booze, fight, love, and perhaps try to come…

If you’re over thirty you should have outgrown your infatuation with Papa by now, methinks; but still it’s nice to revisit this lark of a roman a clef.

You’ll either shudder or joy (or both) at the scenes where the roisterers on the bus are shooting wine into each others’ mouths via boda bag. Did I spell boda bag properly? It’s been a long time, mate.

I know Hemingway has fallen out of wokeness, but it's the original Lost Generation/Gen-X/Emo book about being young and partying through life (across Europe) while wondering what the hell does it all really mean? Toss a doomed love story and running with bulls in there, too and you have a classic.

What would any list of expat literature be without this classic? The plot, if it can be called that, is basically American and British expatriates traveling from Paris to Pamplona, Spain. The heart of the novel however, is the relationships between the travelers. While the running of the bulls and bullfighting provides most of the physical drama, the psychological drama is inherent throughout. Particularly in the doomed romance between the promiscuous Lady Brett Ashley and war-wounded newspaper correspondent Jake Barnes. This is the novel most associated with the term, the lost generation. It should never get lost however, among the…

From Joe's list on expat adventures.

I’m recommending The Sun Also Rises because it was the first book to capture the essence of soldiers who struggled to return to civilian life. They used alcohol to hide their pain and drown their PTSD, their struggles with masculinity or to regain it, and inability to love. I like the way this book captures the feelings soldiers have when they leave the service, such as loss of purpose. Soldiers today returning from the wars similarly struggle with alcohol, drug abuse, and all too prevalent suicide. However, the sun will rise tomorrow. 

In a misogynist time under the pen of an author conflicted about women and his own masculinity, Lady Brett Ashley is the template for a modern, empowered woman. She trumps any man in the masculinity department without losing the feminine essence that draws all of them to her. I found this novel tragic and prophetic in the way that Ashley ends up alone and unfulfilled, like far too many women who are ahead of their time.

From Sid's list on kick-ass women.

This brilliantly written novel is a war and love story without any war and real love scenes. Capturing the so-called lost generations mentality of trying, in a somewhat hopeless alcoholic and decadent way, to cope with the hard emotional wounds and loss of values like honor, courage, stoicism, and glory in the trenches of the First World War. Jake, the American journalist, and protagonist, with his war injury-causing impotence, is unluckily not able to realize his true love for the flamboyant, emotionally destroyed Brett, who on her side can´t fulfill her love to him. In the subtle depicting of the…

From Stig's list on conflict and love.

Want books like The Sun Also Rises?

Our community of 11,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Sun Also Rises.

Browse books like The Sun Also Rises

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in France, Spain, and presidential biography?

France 923 books
Spain 196 books