Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories

By Ernest Hemingway

The ideal introduction to the genius of Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories contains ten of Hemingway's most acclaimed and popular works of short fiction. Selected from Winner Take Nothing, Men Without Women, and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, this collection includes “The Killers,” the first of Hemingway's mature stories to be accepted by an American periodical; the autobiographical “Fathers and Sons,” which alludes, for the first time in Hemingway's career, to his father's suicide; “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” a “brilliant fusion of personal observation, hearsay and invention,” wrote Hemingway's biographer, Carlos Baker; and the title story itself, of which Hemingway said: “I put all the true stuff in,” with enough material, he boasted, to fill four novels. Beautiful in their simplicity, startling in their originality, and unsurpassed in their craftsmanship, the stories in this volume highlight one of America's master storytellers at the top of his form.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribner
• Release date: May 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781476770208

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 Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Some beautiful stories, but I always connect more with novels and this one wasn't an exception. I loved A Clean and Well Lighted Place. The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber was dark, but packed a punch. They're a good way to dip into Hemingway if you're new to his work.

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

This book is drawn from other works and I have read all of the stories several times before either online or in other collected works. Rather than read in awe of the master, this reading had me feeling sorry for the depressing note to all things. While this makes the short stories art, it also hints at a fragility, but not of manhood, as Hemingway's critics often suggest, but of the absurd. And yet Hemingway had no time for the absurd, or at least, Malcolm Cowley with:...a stupid look on his potato face talking about the Dada movement...Yet here, in this collection, I couldn't help but think of the meaninglessness of life and Hemingway's enunciation of the absurd, building over and over in a collection put together, not by Hemingway, but by others. I suspect this is worth looking into further and a few re-reads of Hemingway's major works might benefit from a view through this lens.

[buffalogr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A couple, Harry and Helen, in Africa--he is dying of gangrene; she is by his side, taking care of him. My first Hemingway (since high school) and I really enjoyed it. His writing conveys the inner conflicted soul. Great short story, one of Papa's greatest? How would I know, my first since High school.

[joefreiburger · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love the ending of this short story.

[mjmorrison1971 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hemingway produces a beautiful set of character sketches in this book - I love is prose and while some of the characters in these stories are not likeable the writing makes the effort worthwhile.

[suesbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

the writing was of mixed quality. the bigotry and misogyny were painful, and i expect a part of their time. some of the details provided information regarding locations about which i had little knowledge. i would have preferred more clarity and more emotions.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hemingway at his most Hemingwayesque. Does that tell you what you need to know?

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

Great writer - but just not for me.

[pilgrimjess · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book contains some of Hemmingway's short stories of varying lengths with most of them about 10 pages long but I fear that I may be about to upset his many fans because it just didn't really cut the mustard with me and I cannot in all honesty say that I enjoyed it, which having read a few of his full novels, is a real shame.That said I did enjoy the title story which wonderfully charts the main events in lead character's life. He is an author who is lying badly injured after an accident in Africa and riddled with gangrene, he looks back with regrets over his life, in particular how he failed to write more about his own early life experiences. Hemingway depicts a man who has abandoned his own dreams and ambitions instead settling for marriage to a woman he doesn't really love and conformity. In this story we see the skill of Hemingway with both his characterisation and descriptions of the countryside.The themes of this initial story then go on to form the basis of those stories to follow from memories of childhood to regrets of old men and men at war. There is a recurrant character Nick Adams whom many feel was based on Hemingway himself but on the whole it felt disjointed and without the title story would have been rated even lower. IMHO it didn't work. However, it is also right that I admit that on the whole I am no real fan of short stories either so perhaps it is just me.This will not put me off reading some of Hemingway's other works but next time it will be a full novel.

[mbmackay · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A collection of short stories. Well written, but these are fragments, not short stories as I know them.Read May 2004

[nandadevi_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A collection of short stories that, despite the title, are not all about Africa. But the story that lent it's title to the book is - despite the sentimentality - something akin to the most perfectly composed piece that Hemingway, or any author, has ever written.

[narshkite · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It is no surprise that Hemingway took his life. It was a miserable mind to be in. Men are not men until they prove their invulnerability and lack of real interest in living. In Hemingwayland any sign of connection to others is read as weakness. Women filled with scorn are just waiting to (figuratively) castrate the men in their lives. But that man was the shit when it comes to crafting perfect elegant prose, telling the reader everything she needs to know with heart-stopping beauty and relentless economy. In the short stories the reader can engage in the situation with excitement and fascination and be done before the characters' vapidity and compulsiveness gets boring and vulgar. Reading Hemingway's novels is kind of like watching the Kardashians. For 10 minutes its amazing and you can't look away. Then, like a switch has been flipped, all the watcher feels is boredom and contempt and occasionally a sprinkling of sadness. "Kim Kardashian IS Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises!" But I digress. My point is that the short stories are filled with interest, and substance and beauty, and stunning craft where the books often feel to me like writing exercises. I had read most of these stories before in other collections, but this is well curated and a great way to return and remind myself why I used to really like Ernie.

[maxernst11 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Gelezen toen ik 16 was, veel te jong uiteraard om dit goed te kunnen appreci?ren. Ik vond het toen dan ook maar matig. Twee jaar geleden herlezen: grote klasse!

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Gelezen toen ik 16 was, veel te jong uiteraard om dit goed te kunnen appreciëren. Ik vond het toen dan ook maar matig. Twee jaar geleden herlezen: grote klasse!

[bookconcierge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Audio of Kilimanjaro performed by Charlton Heston
4**** for the title story (3*** for the collection as a whole)

This slim volume contains 10 short stories, including the most famous SoK.
This short story reflects many of Hemingway’s own concerns in the mid-late 1930s. He worried about the effects of “politics, women, drink, money and ambition” on American writers (from Green Hills of Africa). Here he voices those concerns through his main character, Harry, a writer who is dying in the bush from an infected leg wound. Their truck broken down, Harry and his wife have little to do but wait for the plane that should come “soon” to rescue them. Immobilized by his gangrenous leg, Harry reflects – sometimes in a delirious state – on his life and writing career. Today’s reader, knowing how Hemingway ended his own life, can see considerable foreshadowing here. Harry’s obsession with what he had not written, while succumbing to the temptations of an easy life, is slowly but surely poisoning him as much as the infection in his leg is. Heston’s narration of this particular short story is very good; the uber-macho man performing the uber-macho author’s work. I would rate THIS story 4****.

Most of the rest of the stories in the book are not as much to my liking. There are continued threads of death, killing, guns, violence and alcohol abuse through this collection, and, frankly, I just didn’t care about his characters. To be fair, I think this is more a function of what’s happening in my own life rather than a reflection of Hemingway’s talent and skill. The story Fifty Grand about a prizefighter struggling at the end of his career, was very good (I’d give it 4****). The final story, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, takes us back to an African safari and a marriage falling apart. I thought this was the best in the collection, though perhaps more obvious than some of the others. Still, I would give it 4.5****

So while I enjoyed and appreciated three of the ten stories, the rest of the volume left me cold. I give it 3 stars over all.

[neftzger · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had not read Hemingway for over two decades when I picked up this book at the library. I don't remember liking his work that much when I first read it, but I obviously liked his writing enough at the time to read a large portion of what he's written. His work obviously engaged or at least intrigued me, but I'd forgotten that. Revisiting this book later in life was like rediscovering the author as an old friend and appreciating his merits.The Snows of Kilimanjaro is an outstanding piece that's incredibly well written. If you read nothing else from this collection or from Hemingway, I highly recommend it. Hemingway has a distinctive style that you may not always agree with, but I'm walking away from the second reading of this book with deeper respect for his writing.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was rather disappointed to find out that The snows of Kilimanjaro, and other stories is an anthology, consisting of 18 short stories taken from various short story collections.Most stories in this collection are very short, consisting of dialogues about very down to earth topics. I enjoyed the little discussion about the merits of Hugh Walpole and G.K. Chesterton in "The Three-Day Blow".Most stories are a pleasure to read, but are hardly memorable.

[alanteder · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories" is an anthology collection of 10 short stories that was first issued by his publisher Scribners in 1961 which was also the year of Hemingway's death by suicide. There isn't any reference to these being selected by Hemingway himself so we're left to speculate on how the selection was made, although the stories are described on the blurb as "Hemingway's most acclaimed and popular works of short fiction." There are 3 stories from 1927's "Men Without Women" ("In Another Country", "The Killers", "Fifty Grand"), 5 stories from 1933's "Winner Take Nothing" ("A Clean, Well-Lighted Place", "A Day's Wait", "The Gambler, the Nun and the Radio", "Fathers and Sons", "A Way You'll Never Be") and the 2 African safari stories ("The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber") from 1936 that were first collected in 1938's "The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories".Most Hemingway fans will likely have at least one or two other stories that they would expect to have seen included in a "most acclaimed" collection and I was surprised that the exquisite camping and fishing story "Big Two-Hearted River" from 1925 was missing here. However, there is an overall air of melancholy and impending tragedy and death in the stories in this collection which probably didn't suit the inclusion of the sunlight and air and cold fresh waters of the famous outdoor tale.Of the selected stories, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and "A Day's Wait", at 4 or 5 pages each, appear pretty slight at first glance, and yet, James Joyce is reported to have described the former as "one of the best short stories ever written," so some further close attention to each of these stories may be repaid with renewed appreciation and insight. I especially enjoyed reading this collection after having also just read Donald Bouchard's "Hemingway: So Far From Simple" which causes you to view all of Hemingway's characters and stories as metaphors for the writer and the act of writing itself. Reading "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and thinking of the ineffectual Francis Macomber, the sometimes sensitive/sometimes cold Margaret Macomber and the mythologized great white hunter Robert Wilson as all facets of Hemingway himself and the hunt as the path of the career of writing added a whole different view to what can superficially just be read as a tale of cowardice and jealousy in the bush.

[lcoale1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book reminded me of how much I love Ernest Hemingway, who happens to be one of my favorite authors because his writings inspire me. Granted, I missed most of the deep symbolism, but I'm okay with that. Some of the short stories included in this book will be very hard to forget about, and I was quite impressed by Hemingway's writing.

[rainpebble_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I quite enjoyed this slim volume of short stories by Hemingway. His words have a way of engaging the reader with the time, place and space of the story. So far I have loved everything I have read by him.The first short: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which he titled this book after, is about a man & wife on safari in Africa under the Mountain of Kilimanjaro. He has a serious leg injury that has gone gangrene. She is attempting to keep him amused whilst they await the plane to take him to hospital. While they wait they talk and he drinks. He is not so frightened now that the pain is gone.The second: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, is about 2 waiters in a sidewalk cafe and an aged man who comes in every evening and sits quietly drinking until 3:00 A.M. by which time he is drunk and goes home. He attempted suicide 'last' week and his niece who cares for him saved his life. The one waiter is a bit surly and wants the old man to leave so he can close up the joint. The 2nd waiter is much more laid back and sees no harm in letting the gentleman drink for that last hour.The third story: A Day's Wait, is about a little boy who becomes ill and must remain in bed for a day or two. His father reads to him and sits by his bed and talks with him. The boy does not want to sleep even though he is sleepy. He thinks that he is dying.The fourth: The Gambler, The Nun, and the Radio, is about a 2 men hospitalized with gunshot wounds. One was shot twice in the abdomen and the other one in the leg. When the police come in to question them, the men insist that it was just an accident, although they were shot by an angry card player. It was an accident because the man had shot 8 times and only hit them three but was only attempting to hit the one. Good story.The fifth: Fathers and Sons, is about a father and his son out hunting and then about the son & friends out shooting. The son, Nick, always thought of his father in the fall during hunting season.The sixth: In Another Country, is about two men, again in hospital in Milan, Italy with war wounds. They are on machines said to help with their therapy. It is rather a character study as are the others as well.There are four more, each as good as the last. Some of these are just a very few pages, but what pages. After a couple of them I had to just sit and ponder the meaning that Hemingway was possibly attempting to get to us. Also several of these are Nick Adams stories, which are always exceptionally good.I highly recommend this book and I gave it 4 stars.

[br77rino · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Short Life of Francis MacComber was the best of the short stories here, and was very good. A rich but gutless (?) man travels on safari to Africa with his shrewd, content and unloving wife. He is transformed by one of the experiences while hunting, and his wife is as well. A great little tale.

[caklr650 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

An uneven collection of stories. The title story and The Short Life of Francis MacComber were very good, but most of the others were a chore to finish. Doesn't make me want to rush and read more Hemmingway just yet. A real sense of Machismo runs through the book. Men are Men when they fight in War...Against Men. Men like to hunt, in the company of men. Hmm, Does being a man also mean fostering a family value of suicide? I don't mean to be cruel but finding a man in this book who has a sensitive thought or an emotion that is not done in a shade of Red or Black is impossible. I feel like Hemmingway's prose hides behind a facade of pompous bravado. And even though we cannot expect to get the depth of character we would expect to fing in a novel, his characters, to me at least, often come off as insecure, knuckle dragging, Neanderthals who are afraid to express what they really might be feeling

[jpsnow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is my first exposure to Hemingway since "The Old Man and the Sea" (c. 9th grade). My main reaction now is a deep appreciation for his writing style and a belief that one must have a little more life experience to truly respect what and how he conveys the essence of a situation (particularly in adult relationships). "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" gives a quick and hard message about making what you can of your talents and not letting them slip away. The moral is especially geared toward any aspiring writer. The last story in this collection was "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." It parallels elegantly with the hunting theme of the first story, and drives home equally a message about being a man. The relationship nuances were especially dominant in this story too. From "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (p.24): "'The very rich are different from you and me.' And how someone had said to Julian, Yes, they have more money." "A Clean, Well-lighted Place" is a very short story about two waiters watching a customer they might become. "A Day's Wait" is another very short story about a boy who believes he is going to die and his unique young viewpoint that changes when the news of his mistake. "Fathers and Sons" is another Nicholas Adams story about how men in a family line are alike (also very deep into the senses of several male-oriented activities). There are also a couple stories reflective of Hemingway's experience in war and Italy. "Fifty Grand" is a joy -- simple plot, essentials conveyed elegantly, and neat ending.

[rayski_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A bunch of very short stories. Some good, some not.

[jbreedlove_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Thought I'd read some classic short stories but the drabness of most of the stories overcame the fine writing. Maybe Snows, Fifty, and Macomber worked but mostly it seemed disconnected. His Nick Adams stories are so much better than these.

[paperclips_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Never been a big Hemingway fan (but that was high school), but thought I should give it a try again. Some of the stories were very good, others I felt as if I just walked into the middle of a conversation and never got the hang of.The Good: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, A Clean Well-Lighted Place, A Day’s Wait, The Short and Happy Life, Fifty GrandThe Confusing:The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio;In Another Country; The Killers; A Way You’ll Never BeThe first list all had well developed story-lines and could be considered an A –>B–>C type of story (sorry, I am a bit concrete-sequential when it comes to reading); the next list was a bit too scattered for me. If I was to read this again, I would bypass the stories that didn’t do it for me in the first page or two, then move on to the next.