Hemingway: The Postwar Years and the Posthumous Novels

When Ernest Hemingway committed suicide in 1961 he left four unfinished works - A Moveable Feast, Islands in the Stream, The Garden of Eden, and an untitled work on his travels in Africa. The edited versions which have come down to readers and scholars of Hemingway appear as distinct, disjointed texts which fit oddly into his uvre. Through extensive literary detective work Burwell has uncovered substantial evidence which finds that Hemingway in fact designed the three published works as a trilogy, what she terms ‘his own Portrait of the Artist’. She combines biographical and textual analysis to create a compelling document of a period of Hemingway’s life which biographers have slenderly covered. This work will ensure that these little known works be critically re-appraised, and will certainly catalyse discussion among Hemingway’s readers.