Hemingway and Africa (Studies in American Literature and Culture)

Hemingway's two extended African safaris, the first in the 1930s and the second in the 1950s, gave rise to two of his best-known stories ('The Snows of Kilimanjaro' and 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'), a considerable amount of journalism and correspondence, and two nonfiction books, Green Hills of Africa (1935), about the first safari, and True at First Light (1999) and the longer version, Under Kilimanjaro (2005), about the second. Africa also figures largely in the important posthumous novel The Garden of Eden (1986). Considering the time Hemingway spent not only on the safaris but also in preparing for them beforehand and writing about them afterwards, Africa was a major factor in his life and work. But surprisingly little scholarship has been devoted to this aspect of Hemingway's oeuvre. This book fills that empty niche, opening the way for a long-delayed and multi-faceted conversation on a neglected aspect of Hemingway's work. Topics treated include historical, theoretical, biographical, theological, and literary interpretations of Hemingway's African topics and motifs. There is also an up-to-date, annotated review of the scholarship on the African works and a bibliography of Hemingway's reading on natural history, and other topics relevant to Africa. Contributors: Silvio Calabi, Suzanne del Gizzo, Beatriz Penas Ibáñez, Jeremiah M. Kitunda, Kelli A. Larson, Miriam B. Mandel, Chikako Matsushita, Frank Mehring, Erik G. R. Nakjavani, James Plath.