For Whom the Bell Tolls [Hardcover]

In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from the good fight, For Whom the Bell Tolls.The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement inThe Sun Also RisesandA Farewell to Armsto create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. If the function of a writer is to reveal reality, Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, no one ever so completely performed it. Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.Chapter One

He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass. There was a stream alongside the road and far down the pass he saw a mill beside the stream and the falling water of the dam, white in the summer sunlight.

Is that the mill? he asked.

Yes.

I do not remember it.

It was built since you were here. The old mill is farther down; much below the pass.

He spread the photostated military map out on the forest floor and looked at it carefully. The old man looked over his shoulder. He was a short and solid old man in a black peasant's smoclÓ(