Why read Death in the Afternoon?

Book cover of Death in the Afternoon

Book description

Ernest Hemingway's classic portrait of the pageantry of bullfighting.

'I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death'

This is Hemingway's classic portrait of the pageantry of bullfighting. Here are the sights,…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Death in the Afternoon as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

D.W. Buffa

Author

I had always thought it unfair how the bull in a bullfight was worn down until he was ready to be killed, how the bull had no chance. And then I read Hemingway’s book and learned that fairness had nothing to do with it.

Death is, and was meant to be, a certainty for the bull; danger and the possibility of death are a certainty for the man. How the danger of death is approached made a bullfight, and not just a bullfight, great.

The bravery and the “calm indifference” make the bullfighter worthy of respect. I discovered this book…

From D.W.'s list on facing death and danger.

Carl Vigeland

Author

Officially a book about bullfighting, with so many digressions that they become the book, the finest such sections delve deeply into the art and practice of writing, most extraordinarily in the thrilling, moving final pages. It is also in this great book that for the first time in print Hemingway articulates his principle that you can leave something out of what you are writing if you know you are leaving it out.

From Carl's list on learning to write.