Never Won a Major Prize

The Sun Also Rises

by Ernest Hemingway

Summary

A group of disillusioned American and British expatriates, including the impotent war veteran Jake Barnes and the magnetic, self destructive Lady Brett Ashley, drift from the cafes of Paris to the bullfights of Pamplona in search of feeling they can no longer easily find. Hemingway's terse, understated prose and his portrait of the Lost Generation's aimless drinking and desire defined a new voice for American fiction. The novel's spare style influenced decades of writers who followed.

Historical Context & Significance

The 1927 Pulitzer for fiction went to Louis Bromfield's Early Autumn, a now largely forgotten novel of New England gentility. Hemingway would not win a Pulitzer until decades later, for The Old Man and the Sea in 1953.