Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist whose spare, economical prose revolutionized twentieth-century literature. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, he began his career as a newspaper reporter before serving as an ambulance driver in World War I, an experience that profoundly shaped his writing. During the 1920s in Paris, he joined the expatriate circle known as the "Lost Generation," alongside figures such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.

Hemingway's signature style—short sentences, understated emotion, and the famous "iceberg theory" of omission—conveyed powerful themes of war, love, loss, and courage. His major novels include The Sun Also Rises (1926), portraying disillusioned expatriates; A Farewell to Arms (1929), a tragic wartime romance; For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), set during the Spanish Civil War; and The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an aging fisherman's epic struggle, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953.

He also produced acclaimed short stories such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," and the collection Men Without Women. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, Hemingway remains one of the most influential figures in American literary history. He died in Ketchum, Idaho, in 1961.