The Sun Also Rises

By Ernest Hemingway

The most popular of Ernest Hemingway’s books, The Sun Also Rises is an elegant showcase for Hemingway’s powerful prose, memorable characters, and biting social commentary on love and society post WWI. The New York Times called it “An absorbing, beautifully and tenderly absurd, heart-breaking narrative…”

Following American and British expatriates from the lights of Paris to the bloody bullfights of Pamplona, The Sun Also Rises tells the haunting story of Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley, inextricably in love with each other despite Jake’s devastating war wounds and Brett’s entanglements with a bankrupt English noble and a flamboyant Spanish bullfighter. Published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises captured the moral and spiritual decay endemic to Europe in the post-war period, and the resiliency that allowed the Lost Generation to rebuild their lives.

HarperPerennialClassics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781443425186

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer of his time. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established Hemingway as one of the greatest literary lights of the twentieth century. His classic novel The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. His life and accomplishments are explored in-depth in the PBS documentary film from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Hemingway. Known for his larger-than-life personality and his passions for bullfighting, fishing, and big-game hunting, he died in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961. 

Reviews for The Sun Also Rises

[stahl2ricco · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well, if the sticker on the front cover can be believed, I bought this book in 1988 for some college course I took. Cost me $4.95. Since I don't remember most of college, I certainly don't remember the class, nor this book. Thankfully, I am a packrat, and look what I found to read in the garage in 2018! I'm glad I did!I really enjoyed this book, and feel like it's the kin to one of my favorites, "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac. Maybe it's the grandfather to it? Anyway, this story features a lost soul in the person of Jake, who we find in Paris, then Spain, then back to Paris again. Along the way we meet Brett, Mike, Bill, and the creepy Robert Cohn. We also learn a lot about food, drink, bullfighting, fishing, France, Spain, and life in general back then. Despite all the moving about, nothing really happens except for life, and I found it totally interesting! I didn't enjoy how mean many of the characters were, nor how strongly the anti-Semitism rang out. But I enjoyed the meandering about, the vivid descriptions of everything, and the general ennui of the characters. A very fine book. Thanks to whatever professor of whatever course I took who required us to read this! It took 30 years, but it hit it's mark!

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Portret van een Lost Generation helemaal in lijn van Scott Fitzgerald, ook toets van Hesses Steppenwolf. Stylistisch helemaal de toonzetting van de echte Hemingway: direct, echte spreektaal.

[madepercy-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As Hemingway's first novel, it is certainly beyond my comprehension how he could ever understand so much at the age of 27. I am reluctant to disclose too much for fear of spoilers, but the conclusion to the story is very real. The bullfighting is described in ways that make me want to see one, yet simultaneously I am appalled at the thought. Hemingway seems to have felt the same way. He also describes concussion in a way that can only be described by someone who has suffered several concussions. There are no lies in this work. I am becoming accustomed to the meandering first three-quarters of the typical Hemingway plot. It isn't hard work but it isn't gripping either. He seems to lull you into a comfortable sense of normalcy which doesn't end but the last quarter builds and builds to a climax in the last sentence that unfolds the final emotion. With the conclusion to "A Farewell to Arms" I burst into tears. With this novel I exclaimed, "That fucking sucks!" Hemingway's work is seriously brilliant while incredibly timeless. I am not sure whether it is simply cultural alignment or not, but the connection between the pedestrian and the nostalgic intertwined with the exotic European setting connects one's past to Hemingway's past to the power of two. He takes you to the place he has been and then where he is in the story. I am convinced this is the result of his technique of writing as the protagonist in the first person while excising, completely, the presence of the narrator. Brilliant stuff!

[ebt1002 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I went back and forth on my rating of this novel several times. It's so easy to see how Hemingway was said to alter the novel, to take the form into new territory. At first, I was underwhelmed: short, choppy sentences and unconvincing dialogue. But as Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley and their companions in Paris and Pamplona developed, as the tensions of fear, loathing, and longing entwined them in adolescent but also sympathetic tenor, I fell under their spell and enjoyed the narrative ride. That Jake and Brett are in love, and that fate has contrived to keep them apart (that is all I'm saying about that so as to avoid spoilers), serve as the primary thematic vehicle for exploring a time and place and a generation devastated by WWI. Racist language and anti-Semitic themes are part of why I struggled with my rating; can I excuse those by pointing to the 1926 publication date? In today's world, I find it harder to make that call. And it hardly feels adequate to "knock off a star" for such. So, I rated the novel for its literary merits as I perceive them without reference to the undertone of bias and discrimination. It's a great novel. And its author and characters are profoundly flawed. That is both the figure and the ground.

[alphawoman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ok but not crazy about it. Too much foolishness over a "bad" girl. But I guess she was the first of her kind leaving broken hearts and broken bottles of liquor in her path. I suppose the lost generation after WWI was a lot of people who experienced a world so different from the United states that they would never truly find their way home.

[dottieph · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Although Hemingway has great talent in writing conversational prose, I found this novel very boring. How many drinks can one have in one story? Bet this novel has the record!

[deckehoe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The reader is plunged vividly into the worlds of both the post-war lost generation of Paris in the 1920's and the blood-soaked and alcohol-fuelled fiesta de San Firmino of Pamplona. As always, Hemingway is sparse, brutal, and masculine.

[jtp146 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a story about American expatriates, a group of writers bent on experiencing life and experiencing adventures. They are part of a cafe society in Paris where we meet Jake Barnes, Robert Cohn, and Lady Brett Ashley. We soon learn that all of the men are in love with Brett, who is engaged to Mike but has had an affair with Robert and who loves Jake. The group decides to take off on an adventure to the Spanish hillsides for fishing and then to Pamplona to take in a bullfight. Jake and another friend, Bill Gorton, continue to the fishing trip but Mike and Brett are late and Robert decides to wait for Brett in Pamplona. Once the group is all in Pamplona, the bullfighting culture is terrifically described. Few people really understand the finer points of the sport, but Jake is one of them. He introduces Brett to a young bullfighter, whom she seduces and then falls in love with. Tension builds among all the men who are in love with Brett, but Cohn is the most frustrated thinking that he has laid his stake in her because of their affair. They are constantly getting drunk during the fiestas and eventually the men take on Cohn. Cohn is egged on by antisemitic remarks and, being a champion boxer, easily lays into the guys, injuring them all but especially beating Romero, the young bullfighter. Despite his injuries Romero successfully fights the next day and wins Brett as well. Finally, Jake rescues Brett who has been abandoned in Madrid by Romero. She announces that she has decided to stay with Mike, leaving Jake and Brett speaking of things that might, but could not, have been.

[maxernst11 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Portret van een Lost Generation helemaal in lijn van Scott Fitzgerald, ook toets van Hesses Steppenwolf. Stylistisch helemaal de toonzetting van de echte Hemingway: direct, echte spreektaal.

[buffalogr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Classic novel -- emasculated WWI veteran finds himself in Paris with others of the lost generation. I kept drawing parallels to the children of the 60s, similar, I thought. Characters well developed as always. Papa did good in this novel. My first Hemingway novel in this decade, I'll read some more.

[laurochka-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Paris and Pamplona, the main settings for the partying lifestyles of Hemingway's characters. The Lost Generation spending their time in bars and cafes. Interesting relationship between Jake and Brett, strangely Brett is sympathetic despite her behaviour. The bull fighting scenes are particularly evocative. An interesting read.

[ellenq_12 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

my favorite!

[rebarelishesreading · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Dare I say that I found The Sun Also Rises disappointing? I've read three other Hemingway novels and really enjoyed them. Good stories, wonderful human portrayals and beautiful, tight writing. In this one the characters come alive and the writing is still beautiful and tight but the story left me cold. He follows the main character, Jake, on a trip to Basque country first to fish and then to Pamplona for the running of the bulls. Jake travels with and meets up with a group of friends most of whom are new to the Pamplona festival which presents an opportunity for Hemingway to share his love of bull fighting in Jake's introduction of the sport to his friends. Most of the book, however, deals with the relationships between the characters and describes the amazing amounts of alcohol they supposedly drank. I kept wondering how they avoided death from alcohol poisoning!

[theampersand · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Every time I read "The Sun Also Rises," I come away with new ideas of what it's actually about, and I think that that's very high praise indeed. Sure, it's about bullfights and drinking and Hemingway's masculine obsessions, but this time around I was struck by the curious social dynamics at work among Jake Barnes's drunken, glamorous friends. Its a novel about in-groups and out-groups, whether the divide in question is between mere tourists and true bullfight "aficionados," those who saw the Great War up close and those who didn't, or riotous, shameless, spendy drunks and our kind of riotous, shameless, spendy drunks. For all of the author's powerful description of bullfights and bull runs, the scene that made the biggest impression on me was the one in which harmless steers quieted murderously dangerous bulls: the book is full of descriptions of various kinds of herd behavior. Hemingway's use of negative literary space here is nothing short of masterful: he implies the rules that the book's characters play by, but he never spells them out, and this brings the reader into their circle. Similarly, the book's haunted by the specter of the First World War, which seems to have affected all of its characters so deeply that they struggle -- or have perhaps given up trying -- to articulate the ways that they've been hurt. And the damage is extensive: the emotional and moral tone of "The Sun Also Rises" is so despairing that, overt antisemitism aside, Robert Cohn's most serious crime seems to be his sentimentalism. On a more personal level, there's Lady Brett Astley, Jake's potential soulmate and a puzzle composed gender, class, and sexual contradictions: she seemed to me a dangerous beauty jealously guarding a dwindling store of personal magnetism. "The Sun Also Rises" is a short book, but it reads long: Hemingway's prose is journalistically efficient in places, but he's not afraid to lapse into grand and obvious Spanishisms when he describes Pamplona's bullfights. All in all, an enigmatic masterpiece, a book to read and read again.

[bookishjojo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Doing a re-read of the novel for the Seasonal Reading Challenge (Fall 2009). I loved this book when I studied it in high school, so it will be interesting to see if I feel the same way about it now.

[carmenere_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It seems to me readers either love Hemingway or hate him. I tend to be in the love camp and now, after reading The Sun Also Rises, never more so.A group of expatriates, residing in Paris, take a summer vacation in Pamplona to watch Running of the Bulls and enjoy it's 7 days of fiesta. Central to the story are Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. They love each other but because of medical reasons their future together, is just not feasible. So what's there to do but drink and party with your friends. In fact, many of the party members seem confused, unfulfilled and depressed. The result is a bunch of 30 year old adults on spring break, looking for relief in booze and sex. The thing is, this book was written in 1926 and women were thought of very differently so perhaps that's why Hemingway is not a favorite but I appreciate this book for the snapshot in time it provides. He writes of a post WWI world and a generation still coming to terms with the affects of the war. To leverage that he puts Jake and his friend, Bill, on a train and Hemingway's description of the French and Spanish countryside reads like a travelogue. Their sojourn in a small fishing town sounds idyllic and acts as a sharp contrast to the description he provides of the brutal bullfights, they will shortly witness. I enjoyed being a part of this crowd for a short spell but also glad to leave them in their sullen lives.

[occassionalread · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

You don't always have to like a novel's protagonists in order to like the novel. It's not that Jake, Brett, Mike, Robert, and Bill are terrible people. But they spend much of their time hurting each other, even while partying together and drinking incessantly. They are flawed and human. All are based on real people Hemingway knew. The novel's action - plot is too structured a word for the action that takes place - is also based on true events. The Sun Also Rises is deservedly heralded as a great modernist novel. Hemingway's short, muscular sentences on display here influenced countless subsequent writers and the writing holds up extremely well, though at times the way people spoke in the 20s reminded me of a black and white James Cagney gangster film, "hey yous guys." I was impressed by some internal dialogue as well, especially a few pages written to reflect Jake's drunken thoughts racing from topic to topic that stood out from most of the other matter of fact descriptions. Even though not entirely likeable, I definitely encourage people to pick up this book and travel to Paris, Bayone, Pamplona, San Sabastian, Burguete with this crew. They're good company. In their 30s they are old enough to have experienced war, jobs, divorce, love, heartbreak, friendship and betrayal. But they are young enough to party hard, and experience life to its fullest, with all the humor and pain and irony and impossiblity that it has to offer.

[gittel_7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Yeah, Hemingway, so I'm sure its great. I didn't get it.
I feel dumb for not getting it, but I didn't get it.
These characters were a brat pack of annoying spoileds getting drunk and roaming Europe. Read it anyway, because I'm a literary snob and Hemingway was on my literary bucket list. Someone please explain it to me.

[absurdeist · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Sun Also Rises is about how a protracted and tragically untreated case of sexual impotence ruined an otherwise rock solid relationship for a young U.S. expatriate named Jake Barnes. Sometime during those no doubt rollicking but overrated roaring twenties, Jake had himself the hots (he had it bad, man!) for a sweet society lass -- a Lady -- named Brett Ashley. Unfortunately, for both Lady Ashley and Mr. Barnes, the sun was about the only thing that rose during their doomed romance ... excluding the Eiffel Tower, of course. And run on sentences galore like the running of the bullshits. Yada yada yada, Papa!

[sandrabrower · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

So, I guess with reading this book I am not understanding the genius that they call Ernest Hemingway!

I love his short stories, his poetry and his history which is intriguing in and of itself, but this one... Don't get it. It read to me like a travel blog with a ton of drinking! Disappointed ... I guess I better pick up a copy of The Old Man and the Sea quick!

[foof2you · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting story, like most of the so called great books it was so-so. I guess this is the story where the running of the bulls became a thing for Americans to go to. A lot of the prose is unfamiliar in today's world. I found that keeping a dictionary close by was helpful.

[dramman_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Powerful, vivid book read in 1969, just after living in Spain - Hemmingway's description of Spain and bullfighting resonated strongly.

[tsjoseph_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing how fresh this feels.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

One of Hemingway’s earliest novels, this was first published in 1926, and has never been out of print since that time. It is loosely based on the author’s own experiences with a circle of friends frequently known as “The Lost Generation.” The novel follows Jake Barnes, an American journalist, and Lady Brett Ashley, a twice-divorced Englishwoman who seems unable to function without a man fawning over her. Together with a group of friends, including Brett’s fiancé, the Scot, Mike Campbell they travel from Paris to Pamplona for the Festival of San Fermin, and the running of the bulls. Along the way more than one man is convinced he loves Brett and can win her affections. The first Hemingway work I read was his The Old Man and the Sea, which was assigned reading when I was in 8th grade. I loved it and have been a fan of Hemingway’s ever since. Still, some of his works fail to resonate with me. And this was one of them.The ennui with which these people live their lives just doesn’t interest me. I am as bored as they seem to be by their own lives. I don’t understand the attraction to Brett, who seems unable to form any lasting relationship but lives for the conquest. Yes, she beautiful and apparently has some money, but men are literally coming to blows over her affections. And Jake? I get that he’s been wounded in WW1, and that has resulted in impotence. I can understand his resultant reserve and reliance on alcohol to dull his emotions. But I just didn’t get the relationship between he and Brett. Or for that matter, his relationship with the other characters. What drew them together? And what kept them connected?I may have liked (or at least appreciated) the novel more had I read rather than listened. I absolutely hated William Hurt’s delivery on the audio. He is a wonderful actor, but in this case he sounded so bored and uninterested. I felt that the pace dragged. He even managed to make the bullfight sound boring. 1* for his performance of the audio.NOTE: The book was published in Britain under the title Fiesta

[amerynth · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I admit I have rather romantic notions of what it would be like to head to 1920's Paris and hobnob with fellow ex-pats (all of whom would be at some stage of writing their book) over Pernod and tiny cafes. Oh, the conversations I envision. Sadly, Hemingway in "The Sun Also Rises" has convinced me I might as well head to a sports bar in Decatur because most of the conversation is pretty dull. I don't typically care for Hemingway (as I find his attitudes toward women, people of color and now Jewish people to be troubling at best) and this book really wasn't an exception -- it was mainly troubling and dull. The book picked up a bit of a spark when it moved to Pamplona and the bar talk revolved around bulls, but at that point, it was really too late to save it.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

When Hemingway was a writer, during that period of history, it wasn't really permissible to say that a guy just couldn't get it up. These days, that's what half of all books are about; when he wrote "Fiesta" Hemingway had to excuse his protagonist's inability as being a result of an injury suffered at war. Hmmm...

[jenj5 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Listened to Books on Tape edition narrated by Alexander Adams. I had the same problem with this that I did with The Paris Wife - I just didn't like anybody. In fact, I felt like the one sober person at a party where all the drunk people think they're hilarious, but in actuality are mean and destructive. Partly, I find these kinds of people hard to relate to - everyone is unhappily married, but in the process of getting divorced so they can unhappily marry somebody else which is just mystifying to me - why not try being alone for a bit, drinking a little bit less and see if that makes you happier? It probably doesn't help that bull fighting does nothing for me. I think I am just not destined to be a Hemingway fan.

[denisetoby · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had just finished the Paris Wife which tells about EH writing this book after they had been to the bull-fights in Spain. I have to remember this was written in a different time. It seems all they did was drink and travel and I wonder how they had the money to do all of that. Not my favorite book. But glad I can say I read Hemmingway.

[mahallett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

was not expecting to like this and don't really know why i did. a story of english-speakers in france and spain between wars, they all drink way too much and look down on the europeans. they are all in lust with brett who is more like a man than the men. jake is an extremely nice guy. hope he doesn't finish last. he keeps the novel going.

[poetontheone · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

They turned The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's first novel, into a film in 1957, and I wonder about seeing it for fear they twisted this novel into some sort of Hollywood love story. You look at the representations of Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner on the poster and it seems that way, which is a long way off. Hemingway's novel is not a story of pining desire, but of absence and defeat. Barnes does not really want for Lady Ashley, but he did at one time, and the action of the novel is an agonizingly long extension of tangible loss for absolutely everything Barnes does not have. Barnes is castrated physically and emotionally, and the rest of his compatriots are just as lacking. Rather than getting anything from them he is casting stones into a reflecting pond. The most beautiful thing here is a bullfight, a gored steer or a dead matador after one or another elegant dance. Even the beauty to be found here is full of loss. Loss is stretched out across the arc of this narrative like an unwound intestine bloodied and rotting in the Pamplona sun.