For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway
Summary
American dynamiter Robert Jordan joins a band of Spanish guerrilla fighters during the Spanish Civil War, tasked with blowing up a strategic bridge while falling in love with a young woman named Maria during the few days the mission allows him. Hemingway compresses the fighters' courage, betrayal, and fatalism into a tightly framed few days, using the doomed mission to meditate on duty, mortality, and the cost of political conviction. The novel is widely regarded as one of the most powerful English language works to emerge from the conflict.
Historical Context & Significance
The Pulitzer fiction jury recommended the novel for the 1941 prize, but the Pulitzer board overruled the jury and declined to give any award that year at all, reportedly finding the book's violence and frank language objectionable. Hemingway would not win the Pulitzer until more than a decade later, for The Old Man and the Sea.