Death in the Afternoon

1932 book by Ernest Hemingway

Death in the Afternoon
Book cover with color facsimile of "The Bullfighter" by Roberto Domingo.
Author	Ernest Hemingway
Cover artist	Roberto Domingo
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Bull-fighting
Genre	Travel literature
Publisher	Charles Scribner's Sons
Publication date	1932
Pages	517

Death in the Afternoon is a non-fiction book written by Ernest Hemingway about the history, ceremony and traditions of Spanish bullfighting, published in 1932. It also contains a deeper contemplation on the nature of fear and courage. While essentially a guide book, there are three main sections: Hemingway's work, pictures, and a glossary of terms.

Hemingway became a bullfighting aficionado after seeing the Pamplona Festival of San Fermín in the 1920s. He wrote about the tradition in the novel The Sun Also Rises.^[1] In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway explores the metaphysics of bullfighting—the ritualized, almost religious practice—that he considered analogous to the writer's search for meaning and the essence of life. In bullfighting, he found the elemental nature of life and death.^[1] Marianne Wiggins has written of Death in the Afternoon: "Read it for the writing, for the way it's told... He'll make you like it [bullfighting]... You read enough and long enough, he'll make you love it, he's relentless".^[2]

In his writings on Spain, Hemingway was influenced by the Spanish master Pío Baroja. When Hemingway won the Nobel Prize, he traveled to see Baroja, then on his death bed, specifically to tell him he thought Baroja deserved the prize more than he.

Death in the Afternoon was published by Scribner's on 23 September 1932 to a first edition print run of approximately 10,000 copies.^[3]

Notes

^ ^a ^b Meyers 1985, pp. 118–119
^ Wiggins, Marianne (1984). Separate Checks. New York: Random House. p. 148. ISBN 0-394-53255-4.
^ Oliver, p. 75

References

Hemingway, Ernest (2003) [1932]. Death in the Afternoon (1st Scribner trade pbk. ed.). New York, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN 978-0-684-80145-2. OCLC 53453017.
Baker, Carlos (1972). Hemingway: The Writer as Artist (4th ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01305-5.
Meyers, Jeffrey (1985). Hemingway: A Biography. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-42126-4.
Mellow, James R. (1992). Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences. New York: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-37777-3.
Oliver, Charles M. (1999). Ernest Hemingway A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work. New York: Checkmark. ISBN 0-8160-3467-2.

"Death in the Afternoon – A Literary Cocktail" Retrieved July 4, 2010.

External links

Death in the Afternoon at Faded Page (Canada)
Hemingway Archives Archived 2010-12-25 at the Wayback Machine, John F. Kennedy Library

Ernest Hemingway

Bibliography

Novels

The Torrents of Spring (1926)
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
To Have and Have Not (1937)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Nonfiction

Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Green Hills of Africa (1935)

Posthumous

A Moveable Feast (1964)
Islands in the Stream (1970)
The Dangerous Summer (1985)
The Garden of Eden (1986)
True at First Light (1999)
Under Kilimanjaro (2005)

Short stories

"Up In Michigan" (1921)
"Indian Camp" (1924)
"The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" (1925)
"The End of Something" (1925)
"The Three-Day Blow" (1925)
"The Battler" (1925)
"A Very Short Story" (1925)
"Soldier's Home" (1925)
"The Revolutionist" (1925)
"Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" (1925)
"Cat in the Rain" (1925)
"Out of Season" (1925)
"Cross Country Snow" (1925)
"My Old Man" (1925)
"Big Two-Hearted River" (1925)
"Banal Story" (1926)
"Today is Friday" (1926)
"A Canary for One" (1927)
"Fifty Grand" (1927)
"Hills Like White Elephants" (1927)
"The Killers" (1927)
"The Undefeated" (1927)
"Che Ti Dice La Patria?" (1927)
"In Another Country" (1927)
"Now I Lay Me" (1927)
"A Simple Enquiry" (1927)
"Ten Indians" (1927)
"An Alpine Idyll" (1927)
"A Pursuit Race" (1927)
"On the Quai at Smyrna" (1930)
"Fathers and Sons" (1932)
"A Natural History of the Dead" (1932)
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1933)
"A Day's Wait" (1933)
"The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio" (1933)
"A Way You'll Never Be" (1933)
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936)
"The Capital of the World" (1936)
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1936)
"Old Man at the Bridge" (1938)

Short story
collections

Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923)
In Our Time (1925)
Men Without Women (1927)
Winner Take Nothing (1933)
The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1961)
The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War (1969)
The Nick Adams Stories (1972)
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987)
Ernest Hemingway: The Collected Stories (1995)

Story fragments

"On Writing"

Poetry

88 Poems (1979)
Complete Poems

Plays

Today is Friday (1926)
The Fifth Column (1938)

Screenplays

The Spanish Earth (1937 film)

Letters and
journalism

By-Line: Ernest Hemingway (1967)
Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961 (1981)
Dateline: Toronto (1985)
The Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway (2011)

Adaptations

The Sun Also Rises	1957 film 1984 film Opera The Select (The Sun Also Rises) Ballet
"The Killers"	1946 film 1956 film 1964 film Bukowski short story
A Farewell to Arms	1932 film 1957 film 1966 TV series
To Have and Have Not	1944 film The Breaking Point (1950) The Gun Runners (1958) Captain Khorshid (1987)
For Whom the Bell Tolls	1943 film 1959 TV play 1965 TV series 1984 song
The Old Man and the Sea	1958 film 1990 film 1999 animated film
Other film adaptations	The Macomber Affair (1947) Under My Skin (1950) The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962) Islands in the Stream (1977) Soldier's Home (1977) My Old Man (1979) After the Storm (2001) The Garden of Eden (2008) Across the River and into the Trees (2022)