Ernesto, Feldman, Andrew

Ernest Hemingway first landed in Cuba in 1928. In some ways he never left. After a decade of visiting regularly, he settled near Coj mar--a tiny fishing village east of Havana--and came to think of himself as Cuban. His daily life among the common people there taught him surprising lessons, and inspired the novel that would rescue his declining career. That book, The Old Man and the Sea, won him a Pulitzer and, one year later, a Nobel Prize. In a rare gesture of humility, Hemingway announced to the press that he accepted the coveted Nobel as a citizen of Coj mar.

In Ernesto, Andrew Feldman uses his unprecedented access to newly available archives to tell the full story of Hemingways self-professed Cuban-ness: his respect for Coj mar fishermen, his long-running affair with a Cuban lover, the warmth of his adoptive Cuban family, the strong influences on his work by Cuban writers, his connections to Cuban political figures and celebrities, his denunciation of American imperial ambitions, and his enthusiastic role in the revolution.