Looking for Hemingway: The Lost Generation and the Final Rite of Passage

Named by Boston’s NPR News Station as one of the Best Books of 2016

In 1959, the most famous literary figure of his time set out in the twilight of his life to recapture his early success in the 1920s. The experience tested all the credos of bravery and grace under pressure he had lived by.

Just months before turning sixty, Ernest Hemingway headed for Spain to write a new epilogue for his bullfighting classic Death in the Afternoon, as well as an article for Life magazine. His hosts were Bill and Anne Davis, wealthy Americans in pursuit of the avant-garde life of the 1920s’ post-war expatriates, who lavishly entertained celebrities and the literati, from Noel Coward to Laurence Olivier, at their historic villa, La Consula. This hacienda would become Hemingway’s home during the most pivotal months of the Nobel laureate’s denouement, and Bill Davis—fellow adventurer who had survived the Depression running arms during the Spanish Civil War—would become his friend and bullfight-traveling companion.

Looking for Hemingway explores that incredible friendship and offers a rare intimate look into the final period of the legendary author’s life, giving comprehension not only of a writer’s despair but of suicide as a not unreasonable conclusion to a blasted existence.