True at First Light

By Ernest Hemingway

Book Overview

Both a revealing self-portrait and dramatic fictional chronicle of his final African safari, Ernest Hemingway's last unpublished work was written when he returned from Kenya in 1953. Edited by his son... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684849216
• ISBN13: 9780684849218
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Scribner
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Hemingway has brought Africa to his readers in his own words

Hemingway has found a spot on the shelves of readers yearning to read the journals of an exquisite writer. His accounts of this safari with his wife, his attentive bond with the local tribes, and the pure enchantment of the hunt have kept this reader from putting the book down. He has out done himself on bringing his dedicated readers and those who favor a good adventure novel together for a novel to cap of a legacy. Both groups and anyone wanting a good book to sit down with at their hunting camp, or just a book to throw yourself into the cold nights coming this winter, would appreciate True at First Light

Papa's flair still alive

I'm still about forty pages from the end, but I love this book! I marvel at the Hemingway style, still alive, still vibrant. There's not much plot here, but for the best writers, plot is almost an afterthought anyway. It of course demands contrast to The Green Hills of Africa and yet At First Light may be better. Because Hemingway wrote At First Light much later than Green Hills, one is presented in this book not just with the artful descriptions of Africa, its game and its dying safari trade, but also with a first person glance back on a full, rich life which of course Hemingway borrowed from liberally for his writing. It's this interplay between what happens in the present of the novel, and what had happened in the author's past that I found so refreshing. Paris in the 20s and Cuba much later and the American west in between; bullfighting and deep sea fishing; drinking beer, gin, Campari and other beverages alcoholic; and the author's compatriots in the writing trade - Orwell, Fitzgerald - it's all here. The regrets and the long agos and even the triumphs and the whats-to-bes - they're all here. From Papa to you.Enjoy.

The Man Is In It

Sure the work was incomplete and this patched up version tends to ramble and doesn't have a real strong narrative drive. So what? As with virtually all Hemingway, it is a rewarding and fascinating read. The prose is brutal and beautiful and wise and sad and strange and funny as hell sometimes and sometimes definitely not politically correct by today's standards. It will disturb in a new way and reveal fresh rewards to the reader every trip through. The book ends with Hemingway and his wife making plans to visit the Congo by plane. There is great poignancy in knowing that this was the trip (documented in Hemingway's article The Christmas Gift, available in By-Line Ernest Hemingway) where the two plane crashes took place that caused the serious internal injuries which are said to have begun the downward spiral in Hemingway's physical and mental health. What was written in the Saturday Review about Mark Twain's autobiography (also a patched up posthumously published work) I think applies to this book just as strongly: "It is worth reading because the man is in it."

Absorbing

How delightful to read something from the master again. I love some of the new stuff out this year, THE TRIUMPH AND THE GLORY comes to mind, as does A MAN IN FULL, or Norman Mailer's retrospective, but what can rival Ernest Hemingway ? Buy yourself a copy and enjoy!