10 Best Novels About Ernest Hemingway

The Paris Wife – Paula McLain

One of the most popular titles among novels about Ernest Hemingway. A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.

Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway and her life changes forever. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group—the fabled “Lost Generation”—that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises.

Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.

A heartbreaking portrayal of love and torn loyalty, The Paris Wife is all the more poignant because we know that, in the end, Hemingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but Hadley.

My journey reading novels about Ernest Hemingway started with this one.

Love and Ruin – Paula McLain

McLain continues to write novels about Ernest Hemingway. The bestselling author of The Paris Wife returns to the subject of Ernest Hemingway in a novel about his passionate, stormy marriage to Martha Gellhorn—a fiercely independent, ambitious young woman who would become one of the greatest war correspondents of the twentieth century
 
In 1937, twenty-eight-year-old Martha travels alone to Madrid to report on the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War and becomes drawn to the stories of ordinary people caught in devastating conflict. She also finds herself unexpectedly—and uncontrollably—falling in love with Hemingway, a man already on his way to becoming a legend.

In the shadow of the impending Second World War, and set against the tumultuous backdrops of Madrid, Finland, China, Key West, and especially Cuba, where Martha and Ernest make their home, their relationship and professional careers ignite. But when Ernest publishes the biggest literary success of his career, For Whom the Bell Tolls, they are no longer equals, and Martha must make a choice: surrender to the confining demands of being a famous man’s wife or risk losing Ernest by forging a path as her own woman and writer. It is a dilemma that will force her to break his heart, and her own.

If you are a fan of Martha Gellhorn as well, you’ll love this one among novels about Ernest Hemingway.

Mrs. Hemingway – Naomi Wood

A good choice among novels about Ernest Hemingway. A riveting tale of passion, love, and heartbreak, Mrs. Hemingway reveals the explosive love triangles that wrecked each of Hemingway’s marriages.

The Paris Wife was only the beginning of the story…

Paula McLain’s New York Times bestselling novel piqued readers’ interest about Ernest Hemingway’s romantic life. But Hadley was only one of four women married, in turn, to the legendary writer. Just as T.C. Boyle’s bestseller The Women completed the picture begun by Nancy Horan’s Loving Frank, Naomi Wood’s Mrs. Hemingway tells the story of how it was to love, and be loved by, the most famous and dashing writer of his generation. Hadley, Pauline, Martha and Mary: each Mrs. Hemingway thought their love would last forever; each one was wrong.

Told in four parts and based on real love letters and telegrams, Mrs. Hemingway reveals the explosive love triangles that wrecked each of Hemingway’s marriages. Spanning 1920s bohemian Paris through 1960s Cold War America, populated with members of the fabled “Lost Generation,” Mrs. Heminway is a riveting tale of passion, love, and heartbreak. This is one of my favourite novels about Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway’s Girl – Erika Robuck

If you like historical fiction, choose this one among novels about Ernest Hemingway. In Depression-era Key West, Mariella Bennet, the daughter of an American fisherman and a Cuban woman, knows hunger. Her struggle to support her family following her father’s death leads her to a bar and bordello, where she bets on a risky boxing match…and attracts the interest of two men: world-famous writer, Ernest Hemingway, and Gavin Murray, one of the WWI veterans who are laboring to build the Overseas Highway.

When Mariella is hired as a maid by Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline, she enters a rarified world of lavish, celebrity-filled dinner parties and elaborate off-island excursions. As she becomes caught up in the tensions and excesses of the Hemingway household, the attentions of the larger-than-life writer become a dangerous temptation…even as straightforward Gavin Murray draws her back to what matters most. Will she cross an invisible line with the volatile Hemingway, or find a way to claim her own dreams?

An interesting look at the authors life and a must on novels about Ernest Hemingway list.

The Hemingway Files – H K Bush

Mystery novels about Ernest Hemingway are interesting! The allure of literary letters and rare first editions captures the imaginations of three professors of English literature and leads to tragedy in the wake of the Great Kobe Earthquake of 1995. An English professor receives a mysterious package with several smaller packages within it, including a manuscript, from a recently deceased former student. The manuscript tells the former student’s story- a story he had never revealed to anyone. As a newly-minted Ph.D. from Yale, Jack Springs, ended up in Kobe, Japan circa 1992, where he encountered a mysterious Japanese professor of American literature, named Goto.

The second son of a family of immense wealth and power, Goto was a clandestine collector of literary rarities, manuscripts, and books. Through a series of meetings, Goto provided Jack with a systematic set of revelations about Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and other literary giants, all of which were supported by unknown documents in Goto’s possession.

A mystery among many contemporary on novels about Ernest Hemingway list.

Hemingway’s Suitcase – Macdonald Harris

An ingenious novel that turns on the alleged discovery of Hemingway’s lost writings–including five “Nick Adams” stories, which are included in the body of the novel. This intriguing journey across the border between truth and fiction is filled with unexpected complications and vivid characters, and is a must for all Hemingway fans looking to read novels about Ernest Hemingway.

The Hemingway Thief – Shaun Harris

Novelist Henry “Coop” Cooper is contemplating a new book between sipping rum. And lounging on a Baja beach with hotel owner Grady Doyle. When Grady tries to save a drunk from two thugs, Coop tags along for the sake of a good story. The drunk is Ebbie Milch, a small-time thief on the run in Mexico because he has stolen the never-before-seen first draft of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast from a wealthy rare book dealer. The stolen manuscript is so more than just a rare piece of literary history.

It reveals clues to an even bigger prize. The location of a suitcase the young, unpublished Hemingway lost in Paris in 1922. A year’s worth of his stories had vanished, never to be seen again. Until now. But Coop and Grady aren’t the only ones with their eyes on this elusive literary prize. And what starts as a hunt for a legendary writer’s lost works becomes a deadly adventure. For Coop this story could become the book of a lifetime… if he lives long enough to write it.

If you like reading about heists, this should be one your novels about Ernest Hemingway list.

Hemingway’s Island – Eleanor Johnston

It was Cuba in the early 1960’s as the USA. And so USSR brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Renowned author Ernest Hemingway was under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There he was, America’s most famous writer, living in the heart of the revolution in Communist Cuba. There he was, author of For Whom the Bells Tolls, the novel Fidel Castro claimed to have used.

As a model for his guerilla insurgency. Hemingway’s Island is a rich adventure that exposes readers to two distinct narrators of Hemingway’s last. Wild days in Cuba: Mary, Hemingway’s fourth wife, describing his last week in their Cuban home. The Finca Vigía, and Alf O’Malley, a Canadian graduate student in 2010 Havana with his pregnant girlfriend. Alf is a hyperactive, awkward hero who falls into dangerous misadventures. As he searches for Mary’s long-lost manuscript, written for Life Magazine but never published.

If you are really into the last days of the author, this must be on your novels about Ernest Hemingway list.

The Hemingway Hoax – Joe Haldeman

The Hemingway Hoax is a Hugo- and Nebula-winning novella that weaves an intricate plot of a fake Hemingway manuscript. With time travel, multiple universes, and the potential destruction of the omniverse itself. Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, lost a bag containing the manuscript of his first novel on a Parisian train. In 1996, John Baird, a renowned Hemingway scholar. Decides to use that loss to account for a fake manuscript he creates.

Little does Baird suspect that his attempt to pass off the forgery as a recovered. Hemingway manuscript will take him on a journey involving parallel universes and time travel. For Hemingway’s reputation is intricately linked to the fate of multiple worlds. In the omniverse and any attempt to change that can have disastrous consequences. Yet another gem among novels about Ernest Hemingway.

Villa America – Liza Klaussmann

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Cole and Linda Porter, Ernest Hemingway. John Dos Passos – all are summer guests of Gerald and Sara Murphy. Visionary, misunderstood, and so from vastly different backgrounds. The Murphys met and married so young, and set forth to create a beautiful world. They alight on Villa America: their coastal oasis of so artistic genius, debauched parties, impeccable style and flamboyant imagination. But before long, a stranger enters into their relationship, and their marriage must accommodate an intensity that neither had forseen. When tragedy strikes, their friends reach out to them, but the golden bowl is shattered. And neither Gerald nor Sara will ever be the same.

Ravishing, heart-breaking, and written with enviable poise, Villa America delivers on all the promise of Liza Klaussmann’s bestselling debut. Tigers in Red Weather. It is so an overwhelming, unforgettable novel. Not just one of the novels about Ernest Hemingway but other literary giants as well.