Islands in the Stream

New
Paperback
2013
$12.02

Divided into three parts, Islands in the Stream is Hemingway's last work, originally published posthumously in 1970, nine years after his death. Thomas Hudson is an artist and adventurer. In the 1930s, Hudson is living in the Bimini Islands in the Gulf Stream. Separated from his sons for most of the year by their controlling mother, Hudson lives a life carved out by the rolling waves of the sea and the currents of the tide. When his sons come to visit the island, Hudson is forced to come to terms with his unfamiliar role as a father. This compelling novel follows Hudson's evolution from contemplative artist to antisubmarine adventurer during WWII. Hudson must face the harsh realities of life and death, alongside a cast of colourful and vivid characters, in war-time Cuba and at sea. Drawing on Hemingway's own experiences, Islands in the Stream combines one of his most complex and troubled characters with his most exquisite descriptions of nature, in a novel rich in both reflection and action.

Synopsis

Divided into three parts, Islands in the Stream is Hemingway's last work, originally published posthumously in 1970, nine years after his death. Thomas Hudson is an artist and adventurer. In the 1930s, Hudson is living in the Bimini Islands in the Gulf Stream. Separated from his sons for most of the year by their controlling mother, Hudson lives a life carved out by the rolling waves of the sea and the currents of the tide. When his sons come to visit the island, Hudson is forced to come to terms with his unfamiliar role as a father. This compelling novel follows Hudson's evolution from contemplative artist to antisubmarine adventurer during WWII. Hudson must face the harsh realities of life and death, alongside a cast of colourful and vivid characters, in war-time Cuba and at sea. Drawing on Hemingway's own experiences, Islands in the Stream combines one of his most complex and troubled characters with his most exquisite descriptions of nature, in a novel rich in both reflection and action.

$12.02

Quantity

3 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 464
Edition: 5
Publisher: Arrow
Published: 02 May 2013
ISBN 10: 0099586630
ISBN 13: 9780099586630
Book Overview: Hemingway's last work before his death, Islands in the Stream traces the life of an artist and adventurer in the Gulf Stream.

Media Reviews

Hemingway's most deeply autobiographical piece of work * Irish Times *
Hemingway's style is a superb vehicle for revealing tenderness of feeling beneath descriptions of brutality * Guardian *
Many of the episodes contain the most exciting and effective writing Hemingway has ever done * Saturday Review *
This book contains some of the best of Hemingway's descriptions of nature: the waves breaking white and green on the reef off the coast of Cuba; the beauty of the morning on the deep water; the hermit crabs and land crabs and ghost crabs; a big barracuda stalking mullet; a heron flying with his white wings over the green water; the ibis and flamingoes and spoonbills, the last of these beautiful with the sharp rose of their color; the mosquitoes in clouds from the marshes; the water that curled and blew under the lash of the wind; the sculpture that the wind and sand had made of a piece of driftwood, gray and sanded and embedded in white, floury sand -- Edmund Wilson * Saturday Review *
Thomas Hudson, the painter in the book Islands in the Streamis Hemingway himself, attempting to come to terms with everything he loves - the clarity of a brushstroke, his three children, his ex-wives, his lovers, his whores, his friends, his cats, his rifle, his Booth's gin * Newsweek *

Author Bio

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Chicago in 1899, the son of a doctor and the second of six children. After a stint as an ambulance driver at the Italian front, Hemingway came home to America in 1919, only to return to the battlefield - this time as a reporter on the Greco-Turkish war - in 1922. Resigning from journalism to focus on his writing instead, he moved to Paris where he renewed his earlier friendship with fellow American expatriates such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Through the years, Hemingway travelled widely and wrote avidly, becoming an internationally recognized literary master of his craft. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He died in 1961.